X  HMHMNMMM*  MMHMMMMMMMMHX 


PLUM 

PUDDING 

By 

Christopher  Mo r ley 


LIBRARY 

INIVERSITY  OF 
CALIFORNIA 
NTA  CRUZ 


"PS 


07 


32 


PLUM 
PUDDING 


BOOKS  BY 
CHRISTOPHER  MORLEY 

PARNASSUS  ON  WHEELS 
THE  HAUNTED  BOOKSHOP 
SHANDYGAFF 
MINCE  PIE 

PlPEFULS 

KATHLEEN 

TALES  FROM  A  ROLLTOP  DESK 
SONGS  FOR  A  LITTLE  HOUSE 
THE  ROCKING  HORSE 
HIDE  AND  SEEK 
CHIMNEYSMOKE 
TRAVELS  IN  PHILADELPHIA 
PLUM  PUDDING 


PLUM 
PUDDING 


Of  divers  Ingredients,  ^Discreetly 
'Blended  &  Seasoned 


By  Christopher  Morley 


*And  merrily  embellished  by  WALTER  JACK  DUNCAN 


Printed  at  GARDEN  CITY,  NEW  YORK,  by 
DOUBLEDAY,  PAGE  &  CO'Y 
and  are  to  be  sold  by  <^All  W^orthy 
booksellers^  together  with  OTHER 
WORKS  by  the  Same  Author ',  th^s 
modestly  offered  to  your  Attention 

1921 


COPYRIGHT,  1921,  BY 
DOUBLEDAY,  PAGE  &  COMPANY 

ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED,  INCLUDING  THAT  OF  TRANSLATION 
INTO  FOREIGN  LANGUAGES,  INCLUDING  THE  SCANDINAYIAN 

COPYRIGHT,  IQIQ,  BY  PUBLIC  LEDGER  COMPANY 
COPYRIGHT,  1920,  1921,  BY  THE  NEW  YORK  EVENING  POST,  INC. 

COPYRIGHT,  I92O,  BY  THE  OUTLOOK  COMPANY 
COPYRIGHT,  1921,  BY  THE  ATLANTIC  MONTHLY  COMPANY 

PRINTED  AT  GARDEN  CITY,  N.  Y.,  U.  8.  A. 

Pint  Edition 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DEDICATED 
TO 

DAVID  WILLIAM  BONE 

DON  MARQUIS 
SIMEON  STRUNSKY 

MEMBERS  OF  THE 
THREE  HOURS  FOR  LUNCH  CLUB 


o// 


Almost  all  these  sketches  were  originally  published 
in  the  New  York  Evening  Post  and  the  Literary  Review. 
One  comes  from  TAe  Outlook,  one  from  1^0  Atlantic 
Monthly,  one  from  the  Haverford  Alumni  Quarterly, 
and  one  from  the  Philadelphia  Evening  Public  Ledger. 
The  author  is  indebted  to  these  publishers  for  per- 
mission to  reprint. 


Roslyn,  Long  Island 
July,  1921 


\L_J 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 
1 

5 
19 
23 
30 


The  Perfect  Reader 

The  Autogenesis  of  a  Poet 

The  Old  Reliable 

In  Memoriam,  Francis  Barton  Gummere  . 

Adventures  at  Lunch  Time 

Secret  Transactions  of  the  Three  Hours  for  Lunch 

Club 36 

Initiation         42 

Creed  of  the  Three  Hours  for  Lunch  Club  .  .  47 
A  Preface  to  the  Profession  of  Journalism  .  .  51 
Fulton  Street,  and  Walt  Whitman  ....  57 

McSorley's 63 

A  Portrait 69 

Going  to  Philadelphia 7& 

[vii] 


Contents 

PAGE 

Our  Tricolour  Tie 86 

The  Club  of  Abandoned  Husbands      ....  95 

West  Broadway 100 

The  Rudeness  of  Poets 106 

1100  Words 110 

Some  Inns 115 

The  Club  in  Hoboken 124 

The  Club  at  Its  Worst 129 

A  Suburban  Sentimentalist 133 

Gissing 138 

A  Dialogue 143 

At  the  Gasthof  zum  Ochsen            147 

Mr.  Conrad's  New  Preface 151 

The  Little  House 155 

Tadpoles 158 

Magic  in  Salamis 162 

Consider  the  Commuter 167 

The  Permanence  of  Poetry 178 

Books  of  the  Sea 182 

Fallacious  Meditations  on  Criticism          .      .      .  192 

Letting  Out  the  Furnace 202 

By  the  Fireplace 206 

A  City  Note-Book 210 

Thoughts  in  the  Subway 229 

Dempsey  vs.  Carpentier 234 

A  Letter  to  a  Sea  Captain 239 

[  viii  ] 


PLUM 
PUDDING 


THE  PERFECT  READER 

ON  CHRISTMAS  EVE,  while  the  Perfect  Reader 
sits  in  his  armchair  immersed  in  a  book — so  ab- 
sorbed that  he  has  let  the  fire  go  out — I  propose  to  slip 
gently  down  the  chimney  and  leave  this  tribute  in 
his  stocking.  It  is  not  a  personal  tribute.  I  speak,  on 
behalf  of  the  whole  fraternity  of  writers,  this  word  of 
gratitude — and  envy. 

No  one  who  has  ever  done  any  writing,  or  has  any 
ambition  toward  doing  so,  can  ever  be  a  Perfect  Reader. 
Such  a  one  is  not  disinterested.  He  reads,  inevitably, 
in  a  professional  spirit.  He  does  not  surrender  himself 
with  complete  willingness  of  enjoyment.  He  reads  "to 

in 


Plum  Pudding 

see  how  the  other  fellow  does  it";  to  note  the  turn  of  a 
phrase,  the  cadence  of  a  paragraph;  carrying  on  a  con- 
stant subconscious  comparison  with  his  own  work. 
He  broods  constantly  as  to  whether  he  himself,  in  some 
happy  conjuncture  of  quick  mind  and  environing  silence 
and  the  sudden  perfect  impulse,  might  have  written 
something  like  that.  He  is  (poor  devil)  confessedly 
selfish.  On  every  page  he  is  aware  of  his  own  mind 
running  with  him,  tingling  him  with  needle-pricks  of 
conscience  for  the  golden  chapters  he  has  never  written. 
And  so  his  reading  is,  in  a  way,  the  perfection  of  ex- 
quisite misery — and  his  writing  also.  When  he  writes, 
he  yearns  to  be  reading;  when  he  reads,  he  yearns  to 
be  writing. 

But  the  Perfect  Reader,  for  whom  all  fine  things  are 
written,  knows  no  such  delicate  anguish.  When  he 
reads,  it  is  without  any  arriere  pensSe,  any  twingeing 
consciousness  of  self.  I  like  to  think  of  one  Perfect 
Reader  of  my  acquaintance.  He  is  a  seafaring  man, 
and  this  very  evening  he  is  in  his  bunk,  at  sea,  the  day's 
tasks  completed.  Over  his  head  is  a  suitable  electric 
lamp.  In  his  mouth  is  a  pipe  with  that  fine  wine-dark 
mahogany  sheen  that  resides  upon  excellent  briar  of 
many  years'  service.  He  has  had  (though  I  speak  only 
by  guess)  a  rummer  of  hot  toddy  to  celebrate  the  great- 
est of  all  Evenings.  At  his  elbow  is  a  porthole,  brightly 
curtained  with  a  scrap  of  clean  chintz,  and  he  can  hear 
the  swash  of  the  seas  along  his  ship's  tall  side.  And 
now  he  is  reading.  I  can  see  him  reading.  I  know 
just  how  his  mind  feels!  Oh,  the  Perfect  Reader! 
There  is  not  an  allusion  that  he  misses;  in  all  those 

[2] 


The  Perfect  Reader 

lovely  printed  words  he  sees  the  subtle  secrets  that  a 
lesser  soul  would  miss.  He  (bless  his  heart!)  is  not 
thinking  how  he  himself  would  have  written  it;  his 
clear,  keen,  outreaching  mind  is  intent  only  to  be  one 
in  spirit  with  the  invisible  and  long-dead  author.  I 
tell  you,  if  there  is  anywhere  a  return  of  the  vanished, 
it  is  then,  at  such  moments,  over  the  tilted  book  held 
by  the  Perfect  Reader. 

And  how  quaint  it  is  that  he  should  diminish  himself 
so  modestly.  "Of  course"  (he  says),  "I'm  only  a 

Reader,  and  I  don't  know  anything  about  writing " 

Why,  you  adorable  creature,  You  are  our  court  of  final 
appeal,  you  are  the  one  we  come  to,  humbly,  to  know 
whether,  anywhere  in  our  miserable  efforts  to  set  out 
our  unruly  hearts  in  parallel  lines,  we  have  done  an 
honest  thing.  What  do  we  care  for  what  (most  of)  the 
critics  say?  They  (we  know  only  too  well)  are  not 
criticising  us,  but,  unconsciously,  themselves.  They 
skew  their  own  dreams  into  their  comment,  and  blame 
us  for  not  writing  what  they  once  wanted  to.  You 
we  can  trust,  for  you  have  looked  at  life  largely 
and  without  pettifogging  qualms.  The  parallel  lines 
of  our  eager  pages  meet  at  Infinity — that  is,  in  the 
infinite  understanding  and  judgment  of  the  Perfect 
Reader. 

The  enjoyment  of  literature  is  a  personal  communion; 
it  cannot  be  outwardly  instilled.  The  utmost  the  critic 
can  do  is  read  the  marriage  service  over  the  reader  and 
the  book.  The  union  is  consummated,  if  at  all,  in 
secret.  But  now  and  then  there  comes  up  the  aisle  a 
new  Perfect  Reader,  and  all  the  ghosts  of  literature  wait 

[31 


Plum  Pudding 

for  him,  starry-eyed,  by  the  altar.  And  as  long  as 
there  are  Perfect  Readers,  who  read  with  passion,  with 
glory,  and  then  speed  to  tell  their  friends,  there  will 
always  be,  ever  and  anon,  a  Perfect  Writer. 

And  so,  dear  Perfect  Reader,  a  Merry  Christmas  to 
you  and  a  New  Year  of  books  worthy  your  devotion! 
When  you  revive  from  that  book  that  holds  you  in 
spell,  and  find  this  little  note  on  the  cold  hearth,  I  hope 
you  may  be  pleased. 


[4 


THE  AUTOGENESIS  OF  A  POET 

THE  mind  trudges  patiently  behind  the  senses. 
Day  by  day  a  thousand  oddities  and  charms  out- 
line themselves  tenderly  upon  consciousness,  but 
it  may  be  long  before  understanding  comes  with  brush 
and  colour  to  fill  in  the  tracery.  One  learns  nothing 
until  he  rediscovers  it  for  himself.  Every  now  and 
then,  in  reading,  I  have  come  across  something  which 
has  given  me  the  wild  surmise  of  pioneering  mingled 
with  the  faint  magic  of  familiarity — for  instance,  some 
of  the  famous  dicta  of  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  and 
Shelley  about  poetry.  I  realized,  then,  that  a  teacher 
had  told  me  these  things  in  my  freshman  year  at  col- 
lege— fifteen  years  ago.  I  jotted  them  down  at  that 
time,  but  they  were  mere  catchwords.  It  had  taken 
me  fifteen  years  of  vigorous  living  to  overhaul  those 

[5] 


Plum  Pudding 

catchwords  and  fill  them  with  a  meaning  of  my  own. 
The  two  teachers  who  first  gave  me  some  suspicion 
of  what  lies  in  the  kingdom  of  poetry — who  gave 
"so  sweet  a  prospect  into  the  way  as  will  entice  any 
man  to  enter  into  it" — are  both  dead.  May  I  mention 
their  names? — Francis  B.  Gummere  and  Albert  Elmer 
Hancock,  both  of  Haverford  College.  I  cannot  thank 
them  as,  now,  I  would  like  to.  For  I  am  (I  think) 
approaching  a  stage  where  I  can  somewhat  understand 
and  relish  the  things  of  which  they  spoke.  And  I 
wonder  afresh  at  the  patience  and  charity  of  those 
who  go  on  lecturing,  unabated  in  zest,  to  boys  of 
whom  one  in  ten  may  perhaps,  fifteen  years  later, 
begin  to  grasp  their  message. 

In  so  far  as  any  formal  or  systematic  discipline  of 
thought  was  concerned,  I  think  I  may  say  my  educa- 
tion was  a  complete  failure.  For  this  I  had  only  my 
own  smattering  and  desultory  habit  of  mind  to  blame 
and  also  a  vivid  troublesome  sense  of  the  beauty  of  it 
all.  The  charm  of  the  prismatic  fringe  round  the 
edges  made  juggling  with  the  lens  too  tempting,  and 
a  clear  persistent  focus  was  never  attained.  Considered 
(oddly  enough)  by  my  mates  as  the  pattern  of  a 
diligent  scholar,  I  was  in  reality  as  idle  as  the 
idlest  of  them,  which  is  saying  much;  though  I  confess 
that  my  dilettantism  was  not  wholly  disreputable. 
My  mind  excellently  exhibited  the  Heraclitean  doc- 
trine: a  constant  flux  of  information  passed  through 
it,  but  nothing  remained.  Indeed,  my  senses  were 
so  continually  crammed  with  new  enchanting  im- 
pressions, and  every  field  of  knowledge  seemed  so 

[-6] 


The  Autogenesis  of  a  Poet 

alluring,  it  was  not  strange  I  made  little  progress  in 
any. 

Perhaps  it  was  unfortunate  that  both  in  America 
and  in  England  I  found  myself  in  a  college  atmosphere 
of  extraordinary  pictorial  charm.  The  Arcadian  love- 
liness of  the  Haverford  campus  and  the  comfortable 
simplicity  of  its  routine;  and  then  the  hypnotizing 
beauty  and  curiosity  and  subtle  flavour  of  Oxford  life 
(with  its  long,  footloose,  rambling  vacations) — these 
were  aptly  devised  for  the  exercise  of  the  imagination, 
which  is  often  a  gracious  phrase  for  loafing.  But  these 
surroundings  were  too  richly  entertaining,  and  I  was 
too  green  and  soft  and  humorous  (in  the  Shakespearean 
sense)  to  permit  any  rational  continuous  plan  of  study. 
Like  the  young  man  to  whom  Coleridge  addressed  a 
poem  of  rebuke,  I  was  abandoned,  a  greater  part  of 
the  time,  to  "an  Indolent  and  Causeless  Melancholy"; 
or  to  its  partner,  an  excessive  and  not  always  tasteful 
mirth.  I  spent  hours  upon  hours,  with  little  profit, 
in  libraries,  flitting  aimlessly  from  book  to  book.  With 
something  between  terror  and  hunger  I  contemplated 
the  opposite  sex.  In  short,  I  was  discreditable  and 
harmless  and  unlovely  as  the  young  Yahoo  can  be. 
It  fills  me  with  amazement  to  think  that  my  preceptors 
must  have  seen,  in  that  ill-conditioned  creature,  some 
shadow  of  human  semblance,  or  how  could  they  have 
been  so  uniformly  kind? 

Our  education — such  of  it  as  is  of  durable  import- 
ance— comes  haphazard.  It  is  tinged  by  the  enthusi- 
asms of  our  teachers,  gleaned  by  suggestions  from  oi«r 

[7] 


Plum  Pudding 

friends,  prompted  by  glimpses  and  footnotes  and  mar- 
gins. There  was  a  time,  I  think,  when  I  hung  in  tender 
equilibrium  among  various  possibilities.  I  was  enam- 
oured of  mathematics  and  physics:  I  went  far  enough 
in  the  latter  to  be  appointed  undergraduate  assistant 
in  the  college  laboratory.  I  had  learned,  by  my  junior 
year,  exploring  the  charms  of  integral  calculus,  that 
there  is  no  imaginable  mental  felicity  more  serenely 
pure  than  suspended  happy  absorption  in  a  mathemat- 
ical problem.  Of  course  I  attained  no  higher  than 
the  dregs  of  the  subject;  on  that  grovelling  level  I 
would  still  (in  Billy  Sunday's  violent  trope)  have  had 
to  climb  a  tree  to  look  a  snake  in  the  eye;  but  I  could 
see  that  for  the  mathematician,  if  for  any  one,  Time 
stands  still  withal;  he  is  winnowed  of  vanity  and  sin. 
French,  German,  and  Latin,  and  a  hasty  tincture  of 
Xenophon  and  Homer  (a  mere  lipwash  of  Helicon)  gave 
me  a  zeal  for  philology  and  the  tongues.  I  was  a 
member  in  decent  standing  of  the  college  classical  club, 
and  visions  of  life  as  a  professor  of  languages  seemed 
to  me  far  from  unhappy.  A  compulsory  course  in 
philosophy  convinced  me  that  there  was  still  much  to 
learn;  and  I  had  a  delicious  hallucination  in  which  I 
saw  myself  compiling  a  volume  of  commentaries  on  the 
various  systems  of  this  queen  of  sciences.  "The  Gram- 
mar of  Agnostics,"  I  think  it  was  to  be  called:  it  would 
be  written  in  a  neat  and  comely  hand  on  thousands  of 
pages  of  pure  white  foolscap:  I  saw  myself  adding  to 
it  night  by  night,  working  ohne  Hast,  ohne  East.  And 
there  were  other  careers,  too,  as  statesman,  philanthro- 
pist, diplomat,  that  I  considered  not  beneath  my  horo- 

[8] 


The  Autogenesis  of  a  Poet 

scope.     I  spare  myself  the  careful  delineation  of  these 
projects,  though  they  would  be  amusing  enough. 

But  beneath  these  preoccupations  another  influence 
was  working  its  inward  way.  My  paramount  interest 
had  always  been  literary,  though  regarded  as  a  gentle 
diversion,  not  degraded  to  a  bread-and-butter  concern. 
Ever  since  I  had  fallen  under  the  superlative  spell  of 
R.  L.  S.,  in  whom  the  cunning  enchantment  of  the 
written  word  first  became  manifest,  I  had  understood 
that  books  did  not  grow  painlessly  for  our  amusement, 
but  were  the  issue  of  dexterous  and  intentional  skill. 
I  had  thus  made  a  stride  from  Conan  Doyle,  Cutcliffe 
Hyne,  Anthony  Hope,  and  other  great  loves  of  my 
earliest  teens;  those  authors'  delicious  mysteries  and 
picaresques  I  took  for  granted,  not  troubling  over  their 
method;  but  in  Stevenson,  even  to  a  schoolboy  the 
conscious  artifice  and  nicety  of  phrase  were  puzzingly 
apparent.  A  taste  for  literature,  however,  is  a  very 
different  thing  from  a  determination  to  undertake  the 
art  in  person  as  a  means  of  livelihood.  It  takes  brisk 
stimulus  and  powerful  internal  fevers  to  reduce  a 
healthy  youth  to  such  a  contemplation.  All  this  is  a 
long  story,  and  I  telescope  it  rigorously,  thus  setting 
the  whole  matter,  perhaps,  in  a  false  proportion.  But 
the  central  and  operative  factor  is  now  at  hand. 

There  was  a  certain  classmate  of  mine  (from  Chicago) 
whose  main  devotion  was  to  scientific  and  engineering 
studies.  But  since  his  plan  embraced  only  two  years 
at  college  before  "going  to  work,"  he  was  (in  the  fashion 
traditionally  ascribed  to  Chicago)  speeding  up  the 

[9] 


Plum  Pudding 

cultural  knick-knacks  of  his  education.  So,  in  our 
freshman  year,  he  was  attending  a  course  on  "English 
Poets  of  the  Nineteenth  Century,"  which  was,  in  the 
regular  schedule  of  things,  reserved  for  sophomores 
(supposedly  riper  for  matters  of  feeling).  Now  I  was 
living  in  a  remote  dormitory  on  the  outskirts  of  the 
wide  campus  (that  other  Eden,  demi-paradise,  that 
happy  breed  of  men,  that  little  world!)  some  distance 
from  the  lecture  halls  and  busy  heart  of  college  doings. 
It  was  the  custom  of  those  quartered  in  this  colonial 
and  sequestered  outpost  to  make  the  room  of  some  cen- 
tral classmate  a  base  for  the  day,  where  books  might  be 
left  between  lectures,  and  so  on.  With  the  Chicagoan, 

whom  we  will  call  "J ,"  I  had  struck  up  a  mild 

friendship;  mostly  charitable  on  his  part,  I  think,  as  he 
was  from  the  beginning  one  of  the  most  popular  and 
influential  men  in  the  class,  whereas  I  was  one  of  the 
rabble.  So  it  was,  at  any  rate ;  and  often  in  the  evening, 
returning  from  library  or  dining  hall  on  the  way  to  my 
distant  Bceotia,  I  would  drop  in  at  his  room,  in  a  lofty 
corner  of  old  Barclay  Hall,  to  pick  up  note-books  or  any- 
thing else  I  might  have  left  there. 

What  a  pleasant  place  is  a  college  dormitory  at  night ! 
The  rooms  with  their  green-hooded  lights  and  boyish 
similarity  of  decoration,  the  amiable  buzz  and  stir  of  a 
game  of  cards  under  festoons  of  tobacco  smoke,  the  wiry 
tinkle  of  a  mandolin  distantly  heard,  sudden  clatter  sub- 
siding again  into  a  general  humming  quiet,  the  happy 
sense  of  solitude  in  multitude,  these  are  the  partial  in- 
gredients of  that  feeling  no  alumnus  ever  forgets.  In 
his  pensive  citadel,  my  friend  J would  be  sitting, 

[10] 


The  Autogenesis  of  a  Poet 

with  his  pipe  (one  of  those  new  "class  pipes"  with  inlaid 
silver  numerals,  which  appear  among  every  college  gene- 
ration toward  Christmas  time  of  freshman  year).  In 
his  lap  would  be  the  large  green  volume  ("British  Poets 
of  the  Nineteenth  Century,"  edited  by  Professor  Curtis 
Hidden  Page)  which  was  the  textbook  of  that  sopho- 
more course.  He  was  reading  Keats.  And  his  eyes  were 
those  of  one  who  has  seen  a  new  planet  swim  into  his  ken. 
I  don't  know  how  many  evenings  we  spent  there 
together.  Probably  only  a  few.  I  don't  recall  just 
how  we  communed,  or  imparted  to  one  another  our 
juvenile  speculations.  But  I  plainly  remember  how 
he  would  sit  beside  his  desk-lamp  and  chuckle  over  the 
Ode  to  a  Nightingale.  He  was  a  quizzical  and  quickly 
humorous  creature,  and  Keats's  beauties  seemed  to 
fill  him  not  with  melancholy  or  anguish,  but  with  a 
delighted  prostration  of  laughter.  The  "wormy  cir- 
cumstance" of  the  Pot  of  Basil,  the  Indian  Maid 
nursing  her  luxurious  sorrow,  the  congealing  Beads- 
man and  the  palsied  beldame  Angela — these  and  a 
thousand  quaintnesses  of  phrase  moved  him  to  a  gush 
of  glorious  mirth.  It  was  not  that  he  did  not  appreciate 
the  poet,  but  the  unearthly  strangeness  of  it  all,  the 
delicate  contradiction  of  laws  and  behaviours  known  to 
freshmen,  tickled  his  keen  wits  and  emotions  until 
they  brimmed  into  puzzled  laughter.  *  *  Away !  Away ! ' ' 
he  would  cry — 

For  I  will  fly  to  thee, 
Not  charioted  by  Bacchus  and  his  pards, 
But  on  the  viewless  wings  of  Poesy, 
Though  the  dull  brain  perplexes  and  retards- 

[11] 


Plum  Pudding 

and  he  would  shout  with  merriment.  Beaded  bubbles 
winking  at  the  brim;  Throbbing  throats*  long,  long 
melodious  moan;  Curious  conscience  burrowing  like  a 
mole;  Emprison  her  soft  hand  and  let  her  rave;  Men 
slugs  and  human  serpentry;  Bade  her  steep  her  hair 
in  weird  syrops;  Poor  weak  palsy-stricken  churchyard 
thing;  Shut  her  pure  sorrow-drops  with  glad  exclaim — 
such  lines  were  to  him  a  constant  and  exhilarating 
excitement.  In  the  very  simplicity  and  unsophistica- 
tion  of  his  approach  to  the  poet  was  a  virgin  naivete  of 
discernment  that  an  Edinburgh  Reviewer  would  rarely 
attain.  Here,  he  dimly  felt,  was  the  great  key 

To  golden  palaces,  strange  minstrelsy, 
.     .     .     aye,  to  all  the  mazy  world 


.     .     .     aye,  to  an  tne  r 
Of  silvery  enchantment 


And  in  line  after  line  of  Endymion,  as  we  pored  over 
them  together,  he  found  the  clear  happiness  of  a  magic 
that  dissolved  everything  into  lightness  and  freedom. 
It  is  agreeable  to  remember  this  man,  preparing  to  be 
a  building  contractor,  who  loved  Keats  because  he 
made  him  laugh.  I  wonder  if  the  critics  have  not  too 
insistently  persuaded  us  to  read  our  poet  in  a  black- 
edged  mood?  After  all,  his  nickname  was  "Junkets." 

So  it  was  that  I  first,  in  any  transcending  sense, 
fell  under  the  empire  of  a  poet.  Here  was  an  endless 
fountain  of  immortal  drink:  here  was  a  history  potent 
to  send  a  young  mind  from  its  bodily  tenement.  The 
pleasure  was  too  personal  to  be  completely  shared;  for 


The  Autogenesis  of  a  Poet 

the  most  part  J and  I  read  not  together,  but  each 

by  each,  he  sitting  in  his  morris  chair  by  the  desk, 
I  sprawled  upon  his  couch,  reading,  very  likely,  dif- 
ferent poems,  but  communicating,  now  and  then,  a 
sudden  discovery.  Probably  I  exaggerate  the  subtlety 
of  our  enjoyment,  for  it  is  hard  to  review  the  unself- 
scrutinizing  moods  of  freshmanhood.  It  would  be 
hard,  too,  to  say  which  enthusiast  had  the  greater  en- 
joyment: he,  because  these  glimpses  through  magic 
casements  made  him  merry;  I,  because  they  made  me 
sad.  Outside,  the  snow  sparkled  in  the  pure  winter 
night;  the  long  lance  windows  of  the  college  library 
shone  yellow-panelled  through  the  darkness,  and  there 
would  be  the  occasional  interruption  of  light-hearted 
classmates.  How  perfectly  it  all  chimed  into  the  mood 
of  St.  Agnes'  Eve!  The  opening  door  would  bring  a 
gust  of  lively  sound  from  down  the  corridor,  a  swelling 
jingle  of  music,  shouts  from  some  humorous  "rough- 
house"  (probably  those  sophomores  on  the  floor 
below) — 

The  boisterous,  midnight,  festive  clarion 

The  kettle-drum,  and  far-heard  clarionet 

Affray  his  ears,  though  but  in  dying  tone-^— 

The  hall-door  shuts  again,  and  all  the  noise  is  gone. 

It  did  not  take  very  long  for  J to  work  through 

the  fifty  pages  of  Keats  reprinted  in  Professor  Hidden 
Page's  anthology;  and  then  he,  a  lone  and  laughing 
faun  among  that  pack  of  stern  sophomores — so  flewed, 
so  sanded,  out  of  the  Spartan  kind,  crook-knee 'd  and 

[13] 


Plum  Pudding 

dewlapped  like  Thessalian  bulls — sped  away  into 
thickets  of  Landor,  Tennyson,  the  Brownings.  There 
I,  an  unprivileged  and  unsuspected  hanger-on,  lost 
their  trail,  returning  to  my  own  affairs.  For  some 
reason — I  don't  know  just  why — I  never  "took"  that 
course  in  Nineteenth  Century  Poets,  in  the  classroom 
at  any  rate.  But  just  as  Mr.  Chesterton,  in  his  glori- 
ous little  book,  "The  Victorian  Age  in  Literature," 
asserts  that  the  most  important  event  in  English  his- 
tory was  the  event  that  never  happened  at  all  (you 
yourself  may  look  up  his  explanation)  so  perhaps  the 
college  course  that  meant  most  to  me  was  the  one 
I  never  attended.  What  it  meant  to  those  sophomores 
of  the  class  of  1909  is  another  gentle  speculation. 
Three  years  later,  when  I  was  a  senior,  and  those 
sophomores  had  left  college,  another  youth  and  myself 
were  idly  prowling  about  a  dormitory  corridor  where 
some  of  those  same  sophomores  had  previously  lodged. 
An  unsuspected  cupboard  appeared  to  us,  and  rum- 
maging in  it  we  found  a  pile  of  books  left  there,  for- 
gotten, by  a  member  of  that  class.  It  was  a  Saturday 
afternoon,  and  my  companion  and  I  had  been  wonder- 
ing how  we  could  raise  enough  cash  to  go  to  town 
for  dinner  and  a  little  harmless  revel.  To  shove  those 
books  into  a  suitcase  and  hasten  to  Philadelphia  by 
trolley  was  the  obvious  caper;  and  Leary's  famous  old 
bookstore  ransomed  the  volumes  for  enough  money  to 
provide  an  excellent  dinner  at  Lauber's,  where,  in  those 
days,  the  thirty-cent  bottle  of  sour  claret  was  con- 
sidered the  true,  the  blushful  Hippocrene.  But  among 
the  volumes  was  a  copy  of  Professor  Page's  anthology 

[14] 


The  Autogenesis  of  a  Poet 

which  had  been  used  by  one  of  J 's  companions  in 

that  poetry  course.  This  seemed  to  me  too  precious 
to  part  with,  so  I  retained  it;  still  have  it;  and  have 
occasionally  studied  the  former  owner's  marginal 
memoranda.  At  the  head  of  The  Eve  of  St.  Agnes 
he  wrote:  "Middle  Ages.  N.  Italy.  Guelph,  Gui- 
billine."  At  the  beginning  of  Endymion  he  recorded: 
"Keats  tries  to  be  spiritualized  by  love  for  celestials." 
Against  Sleep  and  Poetry:  "Desultory.  Genius  in  the 
larval  state."  The  Ode  on  a  Grecian  Urn,  he  noted: 
"Crystallized  philosophy  of  idealism.  Embalmed  an- 
ticipation." The  Ode  on  Melancholy:  "Non-Gothic. 
Not  of  intellect  or  disease.  Emotions." 

Darkling  I  listen  to  these  faint  echoes  from  a  van- 
ished lecture  room,  anpl  ponder.  Did  J keep  his 

copy  of  the  book,  I  wonder,  and  did  he  annotate  it 
with  lively  commentary  of  his  own?  He  left  college 
at  the  end  of  our  second  year,  and  I  have  not  seen  or 
heard  from  him  these  thirteen  years.  The  last  I  knew 
• — six  years  ago — he  was  a  contractor  in  an  Ohio  city; 
and  (is  this  not  significant?)  in  a  letter  written  then 
to  another  classmate,  recalling  some  waggishness  of 
our  own  sophomore  days,  he  used  the  phrase  "Like 
Ruth  among  the  alien  corn." 

In  so  far  as  one  may  see  turning  points  in  a  tangle 
of  yarn,  or  count  dewdrops  on  a  morning  cobweb,  I 

may  say  that  a  few  evenings  with  my  friend  J were 

the  decisive  vibration  that  moved  one  more  minor  poet 
toward  the  privilege  and  penalty  of  Parnassus.  One 
cannot  nicely  decipher  such  fragile  causes  and  effects, 
It  was  a  year  later  before  the  matter  became  serious 

[151 


Plum  Pudding 

enough  to  enforce  abandoning  library  copies  of  Keats 
and  buying  an  edition  of  my  own.  And  this,  too,  may 
have  been  not  unconnected  with  the  gracious  influence 
of  the  other  sex  as  exhibited  in  a  neighbouring  athen- 
seum;  and  was  accompanied  by  a  gruesome  spate  of 
florid  lyrics:  some  (happily)  secret,  and  some  exposed 
with  needless  hardihood  in  a  college  magazine.  The 
world,  which  has  looked  leniently  upon  many  poetical 
minorities,  regards  such  frenzies  with  tolerant  charity 
and  forge tfulness.  But  the  wretch  concerned  may  be 
pardoned  for  looking  back  in  a  mood  of  lingering  en- 
largement. As  Sir  Philip  Sidney  put  it,  "Self-love  is 
better  than  any  gilding  to  make  that  seem  gorgeous 
wherein  ourselves  be  parties. '* 

There  is  a  vast  deal  of  nonsense  written  and  uttered 
about  poetry.  In  an  age  when  verses  are  more  noisily 
and  fluently  circulated  than  ever  before,  it  might  seem 
absurd  to  plead  in  the  Muse's  defence.  Yet  poetry 
and  the  things  poets  love  are  pitifully  weak  to-day. 
In  essence,  poetry  is  the  love  of  life — not  mere  brutish 
tenacity  of  sensation,  but  a  passion  for  all  the  honesties 
that  make  life  free  and  generous  and  clean.  For  two 
thousand  years  poets  have  mocked  and  taunted  the 
cruelties  and  follies  of  men,  but  to  what  purpose? 
Wordsworth  said:  "In  spite  of  difference  of  soil  and 
climate,  of  language  and  manners,  of  laws  and  customs, 
in  spite  of  things  silently  gone  out  of  mind,  and  things 
violently  destroyed,  the  Poet  binds  together  by  passion 
and  knowledge  the  vast  empire  of  human  society,  as  it 
is  spread  over  the  whole  earth,  and  over  all  time." 

[161 


The  Autogenesis  of  a  Poet 

Sometimes  it  seems  as  though  "things  violently  de- 
stroyed," and  the  people  who  destroy  them,  are  too 
strong  for  the  poets.  Where,  now,  do  we  see  any 
cohesive  binding  together  of  humanity?  Are  we  nearer 
these  things  than  when  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge 
walked  and  talked  on  the  Quantock  Hills  or  on  that 
immortal  road  "between  Porlock  and  Linton "?  Hardy 
writes  "The  Dynasts,"  Joseph  Conrad  writes  his  great 
preface  to  "The  Nigger  of  the  Narcissus,"  but  do  the 
destroyers  hear  them?  Have  you  read  again,  since 
the  War,  Gulliver's  "Voyage  to  the  Houyhnhnms,"  or 
Herman  Melville's  "Moby  Dick"?  These  men  wrote, 
whether  in  verse  or  prose,  in  the  true  spirit  of  poets; 
and  Swift's  satire,  which  the  text-book  writers  all  tell 
you  is  so  gross  and  savage  as  to  suggest  the  author's 
approaching  madness,  seems  tender  and  suave  by  com- 
parison with  what  we  know  to-day. 

Poetry  is  the  log  of  man's  fugitive  castaway  soul 
upon  a  doomed  and  derelict  planet.  The  minds  of 
all  men  plod  the  same  rough  roads  of  sense;  and  in 
spite  of  much  knavery,  all  win  at  times  "an  ampler 
ether,  a  diviner  air."  The  great  poets,  our  masters, 
speak  out  of  that  clean  freshness  of  perception.  We 
hear  their  voices — 

I  there  before  thee,  in  the  country  that  well  thou  know- 

est, 
Already  arrived  am  inhaling  the  odorous  air. 

So  it  is  not  vain,  perhaps,  to  try  clumsily  to  tell  how 
this  delicious  uneasiness  first  captured  the  spirit  of  one 

[17] 


Plum  Pudding 

who,  if  not  a  poet,  is  at  least  a  lover  of  poetry.  Thus 
he  first  looked  beyond  the  sunset;  stood,  if  not  on 
Parnassus,  tiptoe  upon  a  little  hill.  And  overhead  a 
great  wind  was  blowing. 


[18] 


THE  OLD  RELIABLE 

XPRESS  train  stalled  in  a  snowdrift,"  said  one. 
"The  irascible  old  white-haired  gentleman  in  the 
Pulhnan  smoker;  the  good-natured  travelling  salesman; 
the  wistful  young  widow  in  the  day  coach,  with  her  six- 
year-old  blue-eyed  little  daughter.  A  coal-black  Pull- 
man porter  who  braves  the  shrieking  gale  to  bring  in  a 
tree  from  the  copse  along  the  track.  Red-headed 
brakeman  (kiddies  of  his  own  at  home),  frostbitten 
by  standing  all  night  between  the  couplings,  holding 
parts  of  broken  steampipe  together  so  the  Pullman  car 
will  keep  warm.  Young  widow  and  her  child,  of 
course,  sleeping  in  the  Pullman;  white-haired  old 
gentleman  vacates  his  berth  in  their  favour.  Good- 

[19] 


Plum  Pudding 

natured  travelling  salesman  up  all  night,  making  cigar- 
band  decorations  for  the  Tree,  which  is  all  ready  in 
the  dining  car  in  the  morning " 

"Old  English  inn  on  a  desolate  moor,"  said  another. 
"Bright  fire  of  coals  in  the  coffee  room,  sporting  prints, 
yellow  old  newspaper  cutting  framed  on  the  mantelpiece 
describing  gruesome  murder  committed  in  the  house  in 
1760.  Terrible  night  of  storm — sleet  tingling  on  the 
panes;  crimson  curtains  fluttering  in  the  draught; 
roads  crusted  with  ice;  savoury  fumes  of  roast  goose, 
plum  pudding,  and  brandy.  Pretty  chambermaid  in 
evident  anxiety  about  something;  guest  tries  to  kiss  her 
in  the  corridor;  she's  too  distrait  to  give  the  matter 
proper  attention.  She  has  heard  faint  agonized  cries 
above  the  howling  of  the  gale " 

"I  like  the  sound  of  hymns,"  ventured  a  third. 
"Frosty  vestibule  of  fashionable  church,  rolling  thun- 
ders of  the  organ,  fringes  of  icicles  silvered  by  moonlight, 
poor  old  Salvation  Army  Santa  Claus  shivering  outside 
and  tinkling  his  pathetic  little  bell.  Humane  note: 
those  scarlet  Christmas  robes  of  the  Army  not  nearly 
as  warm  as  they  look.  Hard-hearted  vestryman, 
member  of  old  Knickerbocker  family,  always  wears 
white  margins  on  his  vest,  suddenly  touched  by  com- 
passion, empties  the  collection  plate  into  Santa's  bucket. 
Santa  hurries  off  to  the  S.  A.  headquarters  crying  'The 
little  ones  will  bless  you  for  this.'  Vestryman  accused 
of  having  pocketed  the  collection,  dreadful  scandal,  too 

proud  to  admit  what  he  had  done  with  it " 

[201 


The  Old  Reliable 

"Christmas  Eve  in  the  Ambrose  Channel,"  cried 
a  fourth.  "A  blizzard  blowing.  The  pilot  boat, 
sheathed  with  ice,  wallowing  in  the  teeth  of  the  blinding 
storm,  beats  her  way  up  to  the  lee  of  the  great  liner. 
The  pilot,  suddenly  taken  ill,  lies  gasping  on  the  sofa 
of  the  tiny  cabin.  Impossible  for  him  to  take  the  great 
liner  into  port;  2,000  passengers  eager  to  get  home 
for  Christmas.  But  who  is  this  gallant  little  figure 
darting  up  the  rope  ladder  with  fluttering  skirts?  The 
pilot's  fourteen-year-old  daughter.  '/  will  take  the 
Nausea  to  her  berth!  I've  spent  all  my  life  in  the 
Bay,  and  know  every  inch  of  the  channel.'  Rough 
quartermaster  weeps  as  she  takes  the  wheel  from  his 
hands.  'Be  easy  in  your  mind,  Captain,'  she  says;  'but 
before  the  customs  men  come  aboard  tell  me  one 
thing — have  you  got  that  bottle  of  Scotch  for  my 
Daddy?'" 

"Big  New  York  department  store,"  insisted  the  fifth. 
"Beautiful  dark-haired  salesgirl  at  the  silk  stocking 
counter.  Her  slender  form  trembles  with  fatigue, 
but  she  greets  all  customers  with  brave,  sweet  courtesy. 
Awful  crush,  every  one  buying  silk  stockings.  Kindly 
floorwalker,  sees  she  is  overtaxed,  suggests  she  leave 
early.  Dark  girl  refuses;  says  she  must  be  faithful 
to  the  Christmas  spirit;  moreover,  she  daren't  face  the 
evening  battle  on  the  subway.  Handsome  man  comes 
to  the  counter  to  buy.  Suddenly  a  scream,  a  thud, 
horrified  outcries.  Hold  back  the  crowd!  Call  a 
physician!  No  good;  handsome  man,  dead,  mur- 
dered. Dark-haired  girl,  still  holding  the  fatal  hat- 

[21] 


Plum  Pudding 

pin,  taken  in  custody,  crying  hysterically  'When  he 
gave  me  his  name,  I  couldn't  help  it.  He's  the  one 
who  has  caused  all  the  trouble!'  Floorwalker  rever- 
ently covers  the  body  with  a  cloth,  then  looks  at  the 
name  on  the  sales  slip.  'Gosh,'  he  cries,  aghast,  'it's 
Coles  Phillips!'" 

The  gathering  broke  up,  and  the  five  men  strolled 
out  into  the  blazing  August  sunshine.  The  sultry 
glow  of  midsummer  beat  down  upon  them,  but  their 
thoughts  were  far  away.  They  were  five  popular 
authors  comparing  notes  on  the  stories  they  were 
writing  for  the  Christmas  magazines. 


IN  MEMORIAM 
FRANCIS  BARTON  GUMMERE 

I  OFTEN  wonder  what  inward  pangs  of  laughter 
or  despair  he  may  have  felt  as  he  sat  behind  the  old 
desk  in  Chase  Hall  and  watched  us  file  in,  year  after 
year!  Callow,  juvenile,  ignorant,  and  cocksure — gro- 
tesquely confident  of  our  own  manly  fulness  of  worldly 
savoir — an  absurd  rabble  of  youths,  miserable  flint- 
heads  indeed  for  such  a  steel!  We  were  the  most  un- 
promising of  all  material  for  the  scholar's  eye;  com- 
fortable, untroubled  middle-class  lads  most  of  us,  to 
whom  study  was  neither  a  privilege  nor  a  passion,  but 
only  a  sober  and  decent  way  of  growing  old  enough  to 
enter  business. 

We  did  not  realize  how  accurately — and  perhaps  a 
trifle  grimly — the  strong,  friendly  face  behind  the  desk 
was  searching  us  and  sizing  us  up.  He  knew  us  for 
what  we  were — a  group  of  nice  boys,  too  sleek,  too  cheer- 
fully secure,  to  show  the  ambition  of  the  true  student, 
There  was  among  us  no  specimen  of  the  lean  and  dogged 

[23] 


Plum  Pudding 

crusader  of  learning  that  kindles  the  eye  of  the 
master:  no  fanatical  Scot,  such  as  rejoices  the  Oxford 
or  Cambridge  don;  no  liquid-orbed  and  hawk-faced 
Hebrew  with  flushed  cheek  bones,  such  as  sets  the 
pace  in  the  class-rooms  of  our  large  universities.  No: 
we  were  a  hopelessly  mediocre,  well-fed,  satisfied,  and 
characteristically  Quakerish  lot.  As  far  as  the  battle 
for  learning  goes,  we  were  pacifists — conscientious 
objectors. 

It  is  doubtful  whether  any  really  great  scholar  ever 
gave  the  best  years  of  his  life  to  so  meagrely  equipped  a 
succession  of  youngsters !  I  say  this  candidly,  and  it  is 
well  it  should  be  said,  for  it  makes  apparent  the  true 
genius  of  Doctor  Gummere's  great  gift.  He  turned 
this  following  of  humble  plodders  into  lovers  and  zealots 
of  the  great  regions  of  English  letters.  There  was  some- 
thing knightly  about  him — he,  the  great  scholar, 
who  would  never  stoop  to  scoff  at  the  humblest  of  us. 
It  might  have  been  thought  that  his  shining  gifts  were 
wasted  in  a  small  country  college,  where  not  one  in 
fifty  of  his  pupils  could  follow  him  into  the  enchanted 
lands  of  the  imagination  where  he  was  fancy-free.  But 
it  was  not  so.  One  may  meet  man  after  man,  old 
pupils  of  his,  who  have  gone  on  into  the  homely  drudg- 
ing rounds  of  business,  the  law,  journalism— men  whose 
faces  will  light  up  with  affection  and  remembrance 
when  Doctor  Gummere's  name  is  mentioned.  We 
may  have  forgotten  much  of  our  Chaucer,  our  Milton, 
our  Ballads — though  I  am  sure  we  have  none  of  us 
forgotten  the  deep  and  thrilling  vivacity  of  his  voice 
reciting : 

[24] 


Francis  Barton  Gummere 

O  where  hae  ye  been,  Lord  Randal,  my  son? 

0  where  hae  ye  been,  my  handsome  young  man? 

1  hae  been  to  the  wild  wood ;  mither,  make  my  bed  soon, 
For  I'm  weary  wi'  hunting  and  fain  wald  lie  doun. 

But  what  we  learned  from  him  lay  in  the  very  charm 
of  his  personality.  It  was  a  spell  that  no  one  in  his 
class-room  could  escape.  It  shone  from  his  sparkling 
eye;  it  spoke  in  his  irresistible  humour;  it  moved  in 
every  line  of  that  well-loved  face,  in  his  characteristic 
gesture  of  leaning  forward  and  tilting  his  head  a  little  to 
one  side  as  he  listened,  patiently,  to  whatever  juvenile 
surmises  we  stammered  to  express.  It  was  the  true 
learning  of  which  his  favourite  Sir  Philip  Sidney  said : 

This  purifying  of  wit,  this  enriching  of  memory, 
enabling  of  judgment,  and  enlarging  of  conceit,  which 
commonly  we  call  learning,  under  what  name  soever  it 
come  forth  or  to  what  immediate  end  soever  it  be  di- 
rected, the  final  end  is  to  lead  and  draw  us  to  as  high  a 
perfection  as  our  degenerate  souls,  made  worse  by  their 
clay  lodgings,  can  be  capable  of. 

Indeed,  just  to  listen  to  him  was  a  purifying  of  wit,  an 
enriching  of  memory,  an  enabling  of  judgment,  an  en- 
larging of  imagination.  He  gave  us  "so  sweet  a  pros- 
pect into  the  way  as  will  entice  any  man  to  enter  into 
it." 

He  moved  among  all  human  contacts  with  un- 
erring grace.  He  was  never  the  teacher,  always 
the  comrade.  It  was  his  way  to  pretend  that  we 
knew  far  more  than  we  did;  so  with  perfect  court- 
esy and  gravity,  he  would  ask  our  opinion  on  some 

[25] 


Plum  Pudding 

matter  of  which  we  knew  next  to  nothing;  and  we 
knew  it  was  only  his  exquisiteness  of  good  manners 
that  impelled  the  habit;  and  we  knew  he  knew  the  laugh- 
ableness of  it;  yet  we  adored  him  for  it.  He  always 
suited  his  strength  to  our  weakness;  would  tell  us  things 
almost  with  an  air  of  apology  for  seeming  to  know  more 
than  we;  pretending  that  we  doubtless  had  known  it 
all  along,  but  it  had  just  slipped  our  memory.  Mar- 
vellously he  set  us  on  our  secret  honour  to  do  justice  to 
this  rare  courtesy.  To  fail  him  hi  some  task  he  had  set 
became,  in  our  boyish  minds,  the  one  thing  most 
abhorrent  in  dealing  with  such  a  man — a  discourtesy. 
He  was  a  man  of  the  rarest  and  most  delicate  breeding, 
the  finest  and  truest  gentleman  we  had  known.  Had 
he  been  nothing  else,  how  much  we  would  have  learnt 
from  that  alone. 

What  a  range,  what  a  grasp,  there  was  in  his  glowing, 
various  mind!  How  open  it  was  on  all  sides,  how  it 
teemed  with  interests,  how  different  from  the  scholar  of 
silly  traditional  belief !  We  used  to  believe  that  he  could 
have  taught  us  history,  science,  economics,  philosophy 
— almost  anything;  and  so  indeed  he  did.  He  taught 
us  to  go  adventuring  among  masterpieces  on  our  own 
account,  which  is  the  most  any  teacher  can  do.  Lucki- 
est of  all  were  those  who,  on  one  pretext  or  another, 
found  their  way  to  his  fireside  of  an  evening.  To  sit 
entranced,  smoking  one  of  his  cigars,*  to  hear  him  talk 
of  Stevenson,  Meredith,  or  Hardy — (his  favourites 
among  the  moderns)  to  marvel  anew  at  the  infinite 

*It  was  characteristic  of  him  that  he  usually  smoked  Robin  Hood,  that  admirable 
5-cent  cigar,  because  the  name,  and  the  picture  of  an  outlaw  on  the  band,  reminded 
him  of  the  14th  century  Ballads  he  knew  by  heart. 

[26] 


Francis  Barton  Gummere 

scope  and  vivacity  of  his  learning — this  was  to  live 
on  the  very  doorsill  of  enchantment.  Homeward  we 
would  go,  crunching  across  the  snow  to  where  Barclay 
crowns  the  slope  with  her  evening  blaze  of  lights,  one 
glimpse  nearer  some  realization  of  the  magical  colours 
and  tissues  of  the  human  mind,  the  rich  perplexity  and 
many-sided  glamour  of  life. 

It  is  strange  (as  one  reviews  all  the  memories  of 
that  good  friend  and  master)  to  think  that  there  is  now 
a  new  generation  beginning  at  Haverford  that  will  never 
know  his  spell.  There  is  a  heavy  debt  on  his  old  pupils. 
He  made  life  so  much  richer  and  more  interesting  for  us. 
Even  if  we  never  explored  for  ourselves  the  fields  of 
literature  toward  which  he  pointed,  his  radiant  in- 
dividuality remains  in  our  hearts  as  a  true  exemplar 
of  what  scholarship  can  mean.  We  can  never  tell  all 
that  he  meant  to  us.  Gropingly  we  turn  to  little  pic- 
tures in  memory.  We  see  him  crossing  Cope  Field 
in  the  green  and  gold  of  spring  mornings,  on  his  way 
to  class.  We  see  him  sitting  on  the  verandah  steps 
of  his  home  on  sunny  afternoons,  full  of  gay  and  eager 
talk  on  a  thousand  diverse  topics.  He  little  knew, 
I  think,  how  we  hung  upon  his  words.  I  can  think  of  no 
more  genuine  tribute  than  this:  that  in  my  own  class — 
which  was  a  notoriously  cynical  and  scoffish  band  of 
young  sophisters — when  any  question  of  religious  doubt 
or  dogma  arose  for  discussion  among  some  midnight 
group,  someone  was  sure  to  say,  "I  wish  I  knew  what 
Doctor  Gummere  thought  about  it!"  We  felt  in- 
stinctively that  what  he  thought  would  have  been  con- 
vincing enough  for  us. 


Plum  Pudding 

He  was  a  truly  great  man.  A  greater  man  than  we 
deserved,  and  there  is  a  heavy  burden  upon  us  to  justify 
the  life  that  he  gave  to  our  little  college.  He  has 
passed  into  the  quiet  and  lovely  tradition  that  sur- 
rounds and  nourishes  that  place  we  all  love  so  well. 
Little  by  little  she  grows,  drawing  strength  and  beauty 
from  human  lives  around  her,  confirming  herself  in 
honour  and  remembrance.  The  teacher  is  justified 
by  his  scholars.  Doctor  Gummere  might  have  gone 
elsewhere,  surrounded  by  a  greater  and  more  ambi- 
tiously documented  band  of  pupils.  He  whom  we 
knew  as  the  greatest  man  we  had  ever  seen,  moved 
little  outside  the  world  of  learning.  He  gave  himself 
to  us,  and  we  are  the  custodians  of  his  memory. 

Every  man  who  loved  our  vanished  friend  must  know 
with  what  realization  of  shamed  incapacity  one  lays 
down  the  tributary  pen.  He  was  so  strong,  so  full  of 
laughter  and  grace,  so  truly  a  man,  his  long  vacation 
still  seems  a  dream,  and  we  feel  that  somewhere  on  the 
well-beloved  campus  we  shall  meet  him  and  feel  that 
friendly  hand.  In  thinking  of  him  I  am  always  re- 
minded of  that  fine  old  poem  of  Sir  Henry  Wotton,  a 
teacher  himself,  the  provost  of  Eton,  whose  life  has 
been  so  charmingly  written  by  another  Haverfordian — 
(Logan  Pearsall  Smith) . 

THE  CHARACTER  OF  A  HAPPY  LIFE 

How  happy  is  he  born  and  taught 
That  serveth  not  another's  will; 

Whose  armour  is  his  honest  thought, 
And  simple  truth  his  utmost  skill ! 

F281 


Francis  Barton  Gummere 

Whose  passions  not  his  masters  are; 

Whose  soul  is  still  prepared  for  death 
Not  tied  unto  the  world  by  care 

Of  public  fame  or  private  breath ; 

Who  envies  none  that  chance  doth  raise, 
Nor  vice;  who  never  understood 

How  deepest  wounds  are  given  by  praise; 
Nor  rules  of  state,  but  rules  of  good; 

Who  hath  his  life  from  rumours  freed ; 

Whose  conscience  is  his  strong  retreat; 
Whose  state  can  neither  flatterers  feed, 

Nor  ruin  make  oppressors  great; 

Who  God  doth  late  and  early  pray 
More  of  His  grace  than  gifts  to  lend; 

And  entertains  the  harmless  day 
With  a  well-chosen  book  or  friend; 

This  man  is  freed  from  servile  bands 
Of  hope  to  rise  or  fear  to  fall : 

Lord  of  himself,  though  not  of  lands, 
And  having  nothing,  yet  hath  all. 


Such  was  the  Happy  Man  as  Sir  Henry  Wotton 
described  him.  Such,  I  think,  was  the  life  of  our  friend. 
I  think  it  must  have  been  a  happy  life,  for  he  gave 
so  much  happiness  to  others. 


29] 


ADVENTURES  AT  LUNCH  TIME 

THIS  window  by  which  we  sit  is  really  very  try- 
ing to  our  spirit.  On  a  clear  fluid  blue  day  the 
sunlight  pours  over  the  cliffs  and  craggy  coves  and 
angles  of  the  great  buildings  round  St.  Paul's  church- 
yard. We  can  see  the  temptation  of  being  a  cubist 
painter  as  we  study  all  those  intersecting  planes  of  light 
and  shadow.  Across  the  way,  on  Fulton  Street,  above 
the  girl  in  a  green  hat  who  is  just  now  ingurgitating  a 
phial  of  orangeade,  there  are  six  different  roof  levels, 
rising  like  steps  toward  the  gold  lightning  bolts  of  the 
statue  on  top  of  the  Telephone  and  Telegraph  Building. 

[30] 


Adventures  at  Lunch  Time 

Each  of  these  planes  carries  its  own  particular  impact 
of  light  or  shadow.  The  sunshine  seems  to  flow  like 
an  impalpable  cataract  over  the  top  of  the  Hudson 
Terminal,  breaking  and  shining  in  a  hundred  splashes 
and  pools  of  brightness  among  the  stone  channels  be- 
low. Far  down  the  course  of  Church  Street  we  can  see 
the  top  floors  of  the  Whitehall  Building.  We  think 
of  the  little  gilt  ball  that  darts  and  dances  so  merrily  in 
the  fountain  jet  in  front  of  that  building.  We  think 
of  the  merry  mercators  of  the  Whitehall  Club  sitting 
at  lunch  on  the  cool  summit  of  that  great  edifice. 
We  think  of  the  view  as  seen  from  there,  the  olive- 
coloured  gleam  of  the  water,  the  ships  and  tugs  speckled 
about  the  harbour.  And,  looking  down,  we  can  see  a 
peaceful  gentleman  sitting  on  a  bench  in  St.  Paul's 
graveyard,  reading  a  book.  We  think  seriously  of 
writing  a  note,  "What  are  you  reading?"  and  weighting 
it  with  an  inkwell  and  hurling  it  down  to  him.  This 
window  continually  draws  our  mind  outward  and  sets 
us  speculating,  when  we  ought  to  be  answering  letters 
or  making  inquiries  of  coal  dealers  as  to  whether  there 
is  any  chance  of  getting  a  supply  for  next  winter. 

On  such  a  day,  having  in  mind  that  we  ought  to 
write  another  chapter  of  our  book  "How  to  Spend 
Three  Hours  at  Lunch  Time,"  we  issued  forth  with 
Endymion  to  seek  refreshment.  It  was  a  noontide  to 
stir  even  the  most  carefully  fettered  bourgeois  to  im- 
pulses of  escapade  and  foray.  What  should  we  do? 
At  first  we  had  some  thought  of  showing  to  Endymion 
the  delightful  subterranean  passage  that  leads  from  the 

[31] 


Plum  Pudding 

cathedral  grottoes  of  the  Woolworth  Building  to  the 
City  Hall  subway  station,  but  we  decided  we  could  not 
bear  to  leave  the  sunlight.  So  we  chose  a  path  at  ran- 
dom and  found  ourselves  at  the  corner  of  Beekman  and 
Gold  streets. 

Now  our  intention  was  to  make  tracks  toward  Han- 
over Square  and  there  to  consider  the  world  as  viewed 
over  the  profile  of  a  slab  of  cheesecake;  but  on  viewing 
the  agreeable  old  house  at  the  corner  of  Gold  Street — 
"The  Old  Beekman,  Erected  1827,"  once  called  the 
Old  Beekman  Halfway  House,  but  now  the  Old  Beek- 
man Luncheonette — no  hungry  man  in  his  senses  could 
pass  without  tarrying.  A  flavour  of  comely  and  re- 
spectable romance  was  apparent  in  this  pleasant  place, 
with  its  neat  and  tight-waisted  white  curtains  in  the 
upstairs  windows  and  an  outdoor  stairway  leading  up 
to  the  second  floor.  Inside,  at  a  table  in  a  cool,  dark 
corner,  we  dealt  with  hot  dogs  and  cloudy  cider  in  a 
manner  beyond  criticism.  The  name  Luncheonette 
does  this  fine  tavern  serious  injustice :  there  is  nothing  of 
the  feminine  or  the  soda  fountain  about  it:  it  is  robust, 
and  we  could  see  by  the  assured  bearing  of  some  well- 
satisfied  habitues  that  it  is  an  old  landmark  in  that 
section. 

But  the  brisk  air  and  tempting  serenity  of  the  day 
made  it  seem  emphatically  an  occasion  for  two  lunches, 
and  we  passed  on,  along  Pearl  Street,  in  the  bright 
checkerboard  of  sunbeams  that  slip  through  the  trestles 
of  the  "L."  It  was  cheerful  to  see  that  the  same  old 
Spanish  cafes  are  still  there,  though  we  were  a  little 
disappointed  to  see  that  one  of  them  has  moved  from 

[32] 


Adventures  at  Lunch  Time 

its  old-time  quarters,  where  that  fine  brass-bound 
stairway  led  up  from  the  street,  to  a  new  and  gaudy 
palace  on  the  other  side.  We  also  admired  the  famous 
and  fascinating  camp  outfitting  shop  at  208  Pearl 
Street,  which  apparently  calls  itself  WESTMINSTER  ABBEY  : 
but  that  is  not  the  name  of  the  shop  but  of  the  pro- 
prietor. We  have  been  told  that  Mr.  Abbey's  father 
christened  him  so,  intending  him  to  enter  the  church. 
In  the  neighbourhood  of  Cliff  and  Pearl  streets  we 
browsed  about  enjoying  the  odd  and  savoury  smells. 
There  are  all  sorts  of  aromas  in  that  part  of  the  city, 
coffee  and  spices,  drugs,  leather,  soap,  and  cigars. 
There  was  one  very  sweet,  pervasive,  and  subtle  smell,  a 
caressing  harmony  for  the  nostril,  which  we  pursued 
up  and  down  various  byways.  Here  it  would  quicken 
and  grow  almost  strong  enough  for  identification;  then 
again  it  would  become  faint  and  hardly  discernible.  It 
had  a  rich,  sweet  oily  tang,  but  we  were  at  a  loss  to 
name  it.  We  finally  concluded  that  it  was  the  bouquet 
of  an  "odourless  disinfectant"  that  seemed  to  have  its 
headquarters  near  by.  In  one  place  some  bales  of  dried 
and  withered  roots  were  being  loaded  on  a  truck:  they 
gave  off  a  faint  savour,  which  was  familiar  but  baffling. 
On  inquiry,  these  were  sarsaparilla.  Endymion  was 
pleased  with  a  sign  on  a  doorway:  "Crude  drugs  and 
spices  and  essential  oils."  This,  he  said,  was  a  perfect 
Miltonic  line. 

Hanover  Square,  however,  was  the  apex  of  our  pil- 
grimage. To  come  upon  India  House  is  like  stepping 
back  into  the  world  of  Charles  Lamb.  We  had  once 
lunched  in  the  clubrooms  upstairs  with  a  charming 

[33] 


Plum  Pudding 

member  and  we  had  never  forgotten  the  old  seafaring 
prints,  the  mustard  pots  of  dark  blue  glass,  the  five-inch 
mutton  chops,  the  Victorian  contour  of  the  waiter's 
waistcoat  of  green  and  yellow  stripe.  This  time  we 
fared  toward  the  tavern  in  the  basement,  where  even 
the  outsider  may  penetrate,  and  were  rejoiced  by  a 
snug  table  in  the  corner.  Here  we  felt  at  once  the  true 
atmosphere  of  lunching,  which  is  at  its  best  when  one 
can  get  in  a  corner,  next  to  some  old  woodwork  rubbed 
and  shiny  with  age.  Shandygaff,  we  found,  was  not 
unknown  to  the  servitor;  and  the  cider  that  we  saw 
Endymion  beaming  upon  was  a  blithe,  clear  yellow,  as 
merry  to  look  at  as  a  fine  white  wine.  Very  well,  very 
well  indeed,  we  said  to  ourselves;  let  the  world  revolve; 
in  the  meantime,  what  is  that  printed  in  blackface  type 
upon  the  menu?  We  have  looked  upon  the  faces  of 
many  men,  we  have  endured  travail  and  toil  and  per- 
plexity, we  have  written  much  rot  and  suffered  much 
inward  shame  to  contemplate  it;  but  in  the  meantime 
(we  said,  gazing  earnestly  upon  the  face  of  Endymion), 
in  the  meantime,  we  repeated,  and  before  destiny 
administers  that  final  and  condign  chastisement  that 
we  ripely  merit,  let  us  sit  here  in  the  corner  of  the  India 
House  and  be  of  good  cheer.  And  at  this  point,  matters 
being  so,  and  a  second  order  of  butter  being  already 
necessary,  the  waiter  arrived  with  the  Spanish  omelet. 

Homeward  by  the  way  of  South  Street,  admiring 
the  slender  concave  bows  of  fine  ships — the  Mexico 
and  the  Santa  Marta,  for  instance — and  privily  wonder- 
ing what  were  our  chances  of  smelling  blue  water 
within  the  next  quinquennium,  we  passed  in  mild  and 

[341 


Adventures  at  Lunch  Time 

placid  abandonment.  On  Burling  Slip,  just  where  in 
former  times  there  used  to  hang  a  sign  KIPLING 
BREW  (which  always  interested  us),  we  saw  a  great, 
ragged,  burly  rogue  sitting  on  a  doorstep.  He  had 
the  beard  of  a  buccaneer,  the  placid  face  of  one  at 
ease  with  fortune.  He  hitched  up  his  shirt  and  shifted 
from  one  ham  to  another  with  supreme  and  sunkissed 
contentment.  And  Endymion,  who  sees  all  things  as 
the  beginnings  of  heavenly  poems,  said  merrily:  "As  I 
was  walking  on  Burling  Slip,  I  saw  a  seaman  without 
a  ship." 


[35] 


SECRET  TRANSACTIONS  OF  THE  THREE 
HOURS  FOR  LUNCH  CLUB 

THE  doctor  having  been  elected  a  member  of  the 
club,  a  meeting  was  held  to  celebrate  the  event. 
Bowling  Green,  Esq.,  secretary,  was  instructed  to  pre- 
pare carefully  confidential  minutes.  Weather:  fair  and 
tepid.  Wind:  N.N.E.  Course  laid:  From  starting 
line  at  a  Church  Street  bookshop,  where  the  doctor 
bought  a  copy  of  "Limbo,"  by  Aldous  Huxley,  to  Pier 
56,  N.  R.  Course  made  good:  the  same. 

The  doctor  was  in  excellent  form.  On  the  Four- 
teenth Street  car  a  human  being  was  arguing  fiercely 
and  loudly  with  the  conductor  about  some  controversial 

[36] 


Secret  Transactions 

matter  touching  upon  fares  and  destinations.  The 
clamour  was  great.  Said  the  doctor,  adjusting  his  eye- 
glass and  gazing  with  rebuke  toward  the  disputants: 
"I  will  be  gratified  when  this  tumult  subsides."  The 
doctor  has  been  added  to  the  membership  of  the  club 
in  order  to  add  social  tone  to  the  gathering.  His  charm 
is  infinite;  his  manners  are  of  a  delicacy  and  an  aplomb. 
His  speech,  when  he  is  of  waggish  humour,  carries  a 
tincture  of  Queen  Anne  phraseology  that  is  subtle 
and  droll.  A  man,  indeed!  L 'extreme  de  charme,  as 
M.  Djer-Kiss  loves  to  say  what  time  he  woos  the  public 
in  the  theatre  programmes. 

The  first  thrill  was  when  Bowling  Green,  Esq., 
secretary,  cast  an  eye  upward  as  the  club  descended 
from  the  Fourteenth  Street  sharabang,  and  saw,  over 
the  piers,  the  tall  red  funnels  of  the  Aquitania.  This  is 
going  to  be  great  doings,  said  he  to  himself.  O  Cunard 
Line  funnels!  What  is  there  that  so  moves  the  heart? 

Bowling  Green,  Esq.,  confesses  that  it  is  hard  to  put 
these  minutes  into  cold  and  calculated  narrative. 
Among  ships  and  seafaring  concerns  his  heart  is  too 
violently  stirred  to  be  quite  maitre  de  soi. 

The  club  moved  forward.  Welcomed  by  the  suave 
commissionaire  of  the  Cunard  Line,  it  was  invited  to 
rise  in  the  elevator.  On  the  upper  floor  of  the  pier  the 
members  ran  to  the  windows.  There  lay  the  Aquitania 
at  her  pier.  The  members'  hearts  were  stirred.  Even 
the  doctor,  himself  a  hardened  man  of  the  sea,  showed 
a  brilliant  spark  of  emotion  behind  his  monocular 
attic  window.  A  ship  in  dock — and  what  a  ship!  A 
ship  at  a  city  pier,  strange  sight.  It  is  like  a  lion  in  a 

[37] 


Plum  Pudding 

circus  cage.  She,  the  beauty,  the  lovely  living  creature 
of  open  azure  and  great  striding  ranges  of  the  sea,  she 
that  needs  horizons  and  planets  for  her  fitting  per- 
spective, she  that  asks  the  snow  and  silver  at  her  irre- 
sistible stem,  she  that  persecutes  the  sunset  across 
the  purple  curves  of  the  longitudes — tied  up  stiff  and 
dead  in  the  dull  ditch  of  a  dockway.  The  upward 
slope  of  that  great  bow,  it  was  never  made  to  stand 
still  against  a  dusty  pier-end. 

The  club  proceeded  and  found  itself  in  a  little  eddy 
of  pure  Scotland.  The  Columbia  was  just  in  from 
Glasgow — had  docked  only  an  hour  before.  The  doc- 
tor became  very  Scots  in  a  flash.  "Aye,  bonny!"  was 
his  reply  to  every  question  asked  him  by  Mr.  Green,  the 
diligent  secretary.  The  secretary  was  addressed  as 
"lad."  A  hat  now  became  a  "bonnet."  The  fine 
stiff  speech  of  Glasgow  was  heard  on  every  side,  for  the 
passengers  were  streaming  through  the  customs.  Yon 
were  twa  bonny  wee  brithers,  aiblins  ten  years  old, 
that  came  marching  off,  with  bare  knees  and  ribbed 
woollen  stockings  and  little  tweed  jackets.  O  Scot- 
land, Scotland,  said  our  hairt!  The  wund  blaws  snell 
frae  the  firth,  whispered  the  secretary  to  himself,  keek- 
ing about,  but  had  not  the  courage  to  utter  it. 

Here  the  secretary  pauses  on  a  point  of  delicacy. 
It  was  the  purpose  of  the  club  to  visit  Capt.  David 
W.  Bone  of  the  Columbia,  but  the  captain  is  a  modest 
man,  and  one  knows  not  just  how  much  of  our  admira- 
tion of  him  and  his  ship  he  would  care  to  see  spread 
upon  the  minutes.  Were  Mr.  Green  such  a  man  as  the 
captain,  would  he  be  lowering  himself  to  have  any 

[38] 


Secret  Transactions 

truck  with  journalists  and  such  petty  folk?  Mr.  Green 
would  not.  Mark  you :  Captain  Bone  is  the  master  of  an 
Atlantic  liner,  a  veteran  of  the  submarine-haunted  lanes 
of  sea,  a  writer  of  fine  books  (have  you,  lovers  of  sea 
tales,  read  "The  Brassbounder "  and  "Broken  Stow- 
age"?) a  collector  of  first  editions,  a  man  who  stood  on 
the  bridge  of  the  flagship  at  Harwich  and  watched  the 
self -defiled  U-boats  slink  in  and  come  to  a  halt  at  the 
international  code  signal  MN  (Stop  instantly!) — "Ha," 
said  Mr.  Green,  "Were  I  such  a  man,  I  would  pass  by 
like  shoddy  such  pitifuls  as  colyumists."  But  he  was  a 
glad  man  no  less,  for  he  knew  the  captain  was  bigger  of 
heart.  Besides,  he  counted  on  the  exquisite  tact  of  the 
doctor  to  see  him  through.  Indeed,  even  the  stern  offi- 
cials of  the  customs  had  marked  the  doctor  as  a  man 
exceptional.  And  as  the  club  stood  patiently  among 
the  outward  flux  of  authentic  Glasgow,  came  the  cap- 
tain himself  and  welcomed  them  aboard. 

Across  immaculate  decks,  and  in  the  immortal 
whiff,  indefinable,  of  a  fine  ship  just  off  the  high  seas, 
trod  the  beatified  club.  A  ship,  the  last  abiding  place 
in  a  mannerless  world  of  good  old-fashioned  caste, 
and  respect  paid  upward  with  due  etiquette  and  dis- 
cipline through  the  grades  of  rank.  The  club,  for  a  mo- 
ment, were  guests  of  the  captain;  deference  was  paid  to 
them.  They  stood  in  the  captain's  cabin  (sacred 
words).  "Boy!"  cried  the  captain,  in  tones  of  com- 
mand. Not  as  one  speaks  to  office  boys  in  a  news- 
paper kennel,  in  a  voice  of  entreaty.  The  boy  ap- 
peared: a  curly-headed,  respectful  stripling.  A  look 
of  respect:  how  well  it  sits  upon  youth.  "Boy!"  said 

[39] 


Plum  Pudding 

the  captain — but  just  what  the  captain  said  is  not  to  be 
put  upon  vulgar  minutes.  Remember,  pray,  the  club 
was  upon  British  soil. 

In  the  saloon  sat  the  club,  and  their  faces  were  the 
faces  of  men  at  peace,  men  harmonious  and  of  delicate 
cheer.  The  doctor,  a  seafaring  man,  talked  the  lingo 
of  imperial  mariners:  he  knew  the  right  things  to  say: 
he  carried  along  the  humble  secretary,  who  gazed  in 
melodious  mood  upon  the  jar  of  pickled  onions.  At  sea 
Mr.  Green  is  of  lurking  manners:  he  holds  fast  to  his 
bunk  lest  worse  befall;  but  a  ship  in  port  is  his  empire. 
Scotch  broth  was  before  them — pukka  Scotch  broth,  the 
doctor  called  it;  and  also  the  captain  and  the  doctor  had 
some  East  Indian  name  for  the  chutney.  The  secre- 
tary resolved  to  travel  and  see  the  world.  Curried 
chicken  and  rice  was  the  word:  and,  not  to  exult  too 
cruelly  upon  you  (O  excellent  friends!),  let  us  move 
swiftly  over  the  gooseberry  tart.  There  was  the 
gooseberry  tart,  and  again,  a  few  minutes  later,  it 
was  not  there.  All  things  have  their  appointed  end. 
"Boy!"  said  the  captain.  (Must  I  remind  you,  we 
were  on  imperial  soil.)  Is  it  to  be  said  that  the  club 
rose  to  the  captain's  cabin  once  more,  and  matters  of 
admirable  purport  were  tastefully  discussed,  as  is  the 
habit  of  us  mariners? 

"The  drastic  sanity  of  the  sea" — it  is  a  phrase 
from  a  review  of  one  of  the  captain's  own  books, 
"Merchantmen-at-Arms,"  which  this  club  (so  it  runs 
upon  the  minutes),  as  lovers  of  sea  literature,  officially 
hope  may  soon  be  issued  on  this  side  also.  It  is  a 
phrase,  if  these  minutes  are  correct,  from  a  review 

(401 


Secret  Transactions 

written  by  H.  M.  Tomlinson,  another  writer  of  the  sea, 
of  whom  we  have  spoken  before,  and  may,  in  God's 
providence,  again.  "  The  drastic  sanity  of  the  sea  "  was 
the  phrase  that  lingered  in  our  mind  as  we  heard  the 
captain  talk  of  books  and  of  discipline  at  sea  and  of  the 
trials  imposed  upon  shipmasters  by  the  La  Follette  act. 
(What,  the  club  wondered  inwardly,  does  Mr.  La  Fol- 
lette know  of  seafaring?)  "The  drastic  sanity  of  the 
sea ! "  We  thought  of  other  sailors  we  had  known,  and 
how  they  had  found  happiness  and  simplicity  in  the  or- 
dered combat  with  their  friendly  enemy.  A  virtue 
goes  out  of  a  ship  (Joseph  Conrad  said,  in  effect)  when 
she  touches  her  quay.  Her  beauty  and  purpose  are,  for 
the  moment,  dulled  and  dimmed.  But  even  there,  how 
much  she  brings  us.  How  much,  even  though  we  do 
not  put  it  into  words,  the  faces  and  accents  of  our  sea- 
faring friends  give  us  in  the  way  of  plain  wisdom  and 
idealism.  And  the  secretary,  as  he  stepped  aboard 
the  hubbub  of  a  subway  train,  was  still  pondering 
"the  drastic  sanity  of  the  sea." 


41 


INITIATION 

ALLURED  by  the  published  transactions  of  the 
club,  our  friend  Lawton  presented  himself  at  the 
headquarters  toward  lunch  time  and  announced  him- 
self as  a  candidate  for  membership.  An  executive 
session  was  hastily  convened.  Endymion  broke  the 
news  to  the  candidate  that  initiates  in  this  select  or- 
ganization are  expected  to  entertain  the  club  at  lunch- 
eon. To  the  surprise  of  the  club,  our  genial  visitor 
neither  shrank  nor  quailed.  His  face  was  bland  and 
his  bearing  ambitious  in  the  extreme.  Very  well,  he 
said;  as  long  as  it  isn't  the  Beaux  Arts  cafe. 

The  itinerary  of  the  club  for  this  day  had  already 
been  arranged  by  the  secretary.  The  two  charter  mem- 
bers, plus  the  high-spirited  acolyte,  made  their  way 
along  West  Street  toward  the  Cortlandt  Street  ferry. 
It  was  plain  from  the  outset  that  fortune  had  favoured 

[421 


Initiation 

the  organization  with  a  new  member  of  the  most 
sparkling  quality.  Every  few  yards  a  gallant  witti- 
cism fell  from  him.  Some  of  these  the  two  others 
were  able  to  juggle  and  return,  but  many  were  too  flash- 
ing for  them  to  cope  with.  In  front  of  the  ferry  house 
lay  a  deep  and  quaggish  puddle  of  slime,  crossable  only 
by  ginger-footed  work  upon  sheets  of  tin.  Endymion 
rafted  his  tenuous  form  across  with  a  delicate  straddle 
of  spidery  limbs.  The  secretary  followed,  with  a  more 
solid  squashing  technique.  "Ha,"  cried  the  new  mem- 
ber; "grace  before  meat!"  Endymion  and  the  secretary 
exchanged  secret  glances.  Lawton,  although  he  knew 
it  not,  was  elected  from  that  moment. 

The  ritual  of  the  club,  while  stern  toward  initiates, 
is  not  brutal.  Since  you  are  bursar  for  the  lunch, 
said  the  secretary,  I  will  buy  the  ferry  tickets,  and  he 
did  so.  On  the  boat  these  carefree  men  gazed  blithely 
upon  the  shipping.  "Little  did  I  think,"  said  Lawton, 
"that  I  was  going  for  a  sea  voyage."  "That,"  said  the 
club,  "is  the  kind  of  fellows  we  are.  Whimsical.  As 
soon  as  we  think  of  a  thing,  we  don't  do  it." 

"Is  that  the  Leviathan  up  there?"  said  one  of  the 
members,  pointing  toward  a  gray  hull  on  the  Hoboken 
horizon.  No  one  knew,  but  the  secretary  was  reminded 
of  an  adventure  during  the  war.  "One  time  I  was 
crossing  on  this  ferry,"  he  said,  "and  the  Leviathan 
passed  right  by  us.  It  was  just  at  dusk  and  her  cam- 
ouflage was  wonderful.  Her  blotches  and  stripes  were 
so  arranged  that  from  a  little  distance,  in  the  twilight, 
she  gave  the  impression  of  a  much  smaller  vessel, 
going  the  other  way.  All  her  upper  works  seemed  to 

[43] 


Plum  Pudding 

fade  out  in  the  haze  and  she  became  a  much  smaller 
ship."  "That  would  be  a  wonderful  plan  for  some  of 
these  copious  dowagers  one  sees,"  said  the  irreverent 
Lawton.  "Yes,"  we  said;  "instead  of  a  stout  lady 
going  in  to  dinner,  you  would  see  a  slim  flapper  coming 
out." 

Something  was  then  said  about  a  good  friend  of  the 
club  who  had  at  one  time  worked  for  the  Y.  M.  C.  A. 
"  What  is  he  doing  now?  "  asked  one.  "He's  with  Grace 
and  Company,"  said  the  secretary.  The  candidate  was 
unabashed.  "Think,"  he  said,  "of  a  Y.  M.  C.  A.  man 
getting  grace  at  last." 

The  club  found  the  Jersey  City  terminal  much  as 
usual,  and  to  our  surprise  the  candidate  kept  up  his 
courage  nobly  as  he  was  steered  toward  the  place  of  pen- 
ance, being  the  station  lunch  counter.  The  club  re- 
membered this  as  a  place  of  excellent  food  in  days 
gone  by,  when  trains  from  Philadelphia  stopped  here 
instead  of  at  the  Penn.  Station.  Placing  the  host  care- 
fully in  the  middle,  the  three  sat  down  at  the  curving 
marble  slab.  The  waiters  immediately  sensed  that 
something  unusual  was  toward.  Two  dashed  up  with 
courteous  attentions.  It  was  surmised  by  the  club  that 
the  trio  had  happened  to  sit  at  a  spot  where  the  juris- 
dictions of  two  waiters  met.  Both  the  wings  of  the  trio 
waved  the  waiters  toward  the  blushing  novice,  making 
it  plain  that  upon  him  lay  all  responsibility.  "It  is  ob- 
vious," remarked  the  secretary,  "that  you,  Lawton,  are 
right  on  the  boundary  line  where  two  waiters  meet. 
You  will  have  to  tip  them  both." 

The  new  member  was  game.  "Well,"  he  said,  with- 
[44] 


Initiation 

out  a  trace  of  nervousness;  "what '11  you  have?"  The 
choice  fell  upon  breast  of  lamb.  The  secretary  asked 
for  iced  tea.  Endymion,  more  ruthless,  ordered  ginger 
ale.  When  the  ginger  ale  came,  Lawton,  still  waggish, 
observed  the  label,  which  was  one  of  the  many  imitations 
of  a  well-known  brand.  "The  man  who  invented  the 
diamond-shaped  label,"  said  Lawton,  "was  certainly  a 
pathfinder  in  the  wilderness  of  the  ginger  ale  business. 
This  ginger  ale,"  said  Lawton,  tasting  it,  "is  carefully 
warmed,  like  old  claret." 

The  club  sought  to  keep  their  host's  mind  off  the 
painful  topic  of  viands.  "Sitting  here  makes  one 
feel  as  though  he  ought  to  be  going  to  take  a  train  some- 
where," said  one.  "Yes,  the  express  for  Weehawken," 
said  the  vivacious  host.  From  this  it  was  only  a  step  to 
speaking  of  Brooklyn.  The  secretary  explained  that 
the  club  had  outlined  a  careful  itinerary  in  that  bor- 
ough for  proximate  pursuit.  Lawton  told  that  he 
had  at  one  time  written  an  essay  on  the  effect  of  Brook- 
lyn on  the  dialogue  of  the  American  drama.  "It  is  the 
butt  end  of  Long  Island,"  he  cried,  with  cruel  mirth. 
Lovers  of  Brooklyn  in  the  club  nearly  blackballed  him 
for  this. 

With  ice  cream  and  cottage  pudding,  the  admirable 
menu  proceeded.  The  waiters  conferred  secretly  to- 
gether. They  carefully  noted  the  cheerful  carving  of 
the  host's  brow.  They  will  know  him  again.  A  man 
who  bursts  in  suddenly  upon  a  railroad  lunch  counter 
and  pays  for  three  such  meals,  here  is  an  event  in  the 
grim  routine!  But  perhaps  the  two  charter  members 
were  feeling  pangs  of  conscience.  "Come,"  they  said, 

[451 


Plum  Pudding 

"at  least  let  us  split  the  ginger  ale  checks."  But  Law- 
ton  was  seeing  it  through.  Not  a  drum  was  heard,  not 
a  funeral  note,  as  our  host  to  the  cashier  we  hurried. 
The  secretary  bought  a  penny  box  of  matches  and  lit  the 
great  man's  cigarette  for  him.  Endymion,  equally 
stirred,  ran  to  buy  the  ferry  tickets  for  the  return 
voyage.  "This  tune,"  he  said,  "I  will  be  the  ferry 
godmother." 

On  the  homeward  passage  a  little  drowse  fell  upon  the 
two  charter  members.  They  had  lunched  more  richly 
than  was  their  wont.  "Oh,  these  distressing,  heavy 
lunches!"  as  Aldous  Huxley  cries  in  one  of  his  poems. 
But  Lawton  was  still  of  bright  vivacity.  At  that 
time  the  club  was  perturbed  by  the  coming  Harding- 
Cox  election.  "Which  of  the  vice-presidents  are  you 
going  to  vote  for?"  he  cried,  and  then  said:  "It  looks 
to  me  like  Debs  or  dubs." 

Endymion  and  the  secretary  looked  at  each  other 
solemnly.  The  time  had  come.  "I,  Endymion,"  said 
the  chairman,  "take  thee,  Lawton,  to  have  and  to 
hold,  as  a  member  of  the  club." 

And  the  secretary  tenderly  pronounced  the  society's 
formula  for  such  occasions:  "There  is  no  inanition  in 
an  initiation." 


46 


CREED  OF  THE  THREE  HOURS  FOR  LUNCH 
CLUB 

IT  HAS  been  suggested  that  the  Three  Hours  for 
Lunch  Club  is  an  immoral  institution;  that  it  is 
founded  upon  an  insufficient  respect  for  the  devotions 
of  industry;  that  it  runs  counter  to  the  form  and  pres- 
sure of  the  age;  that  it  encourages  a  greedy  and  ram- 
bling humour  in  the  young  of  both  sexes;  that  it  even 
punctures,  in  the  bosoms  of  settled  merchants  and  ro- 
tarians,  that  capsule  of  efficiency  and  determination 
by  which  Great  Matters  are  Put  Over.  It  has  been  said, 
in  short,  that  the  Three  Hours  for  Lunch  Club  should 
be  more  clandestine  and  reticent  about  its  truancies. 

Accordingly,  it  seems  good  to  us  to  testify  concerning 
Lunches  and  the  philosophy  of  Lunching. 

There  are  Lunches  of  many  kinds.     The  Club  has 

[47] 


Plum  Pudding 

been  privileged  to  attend  gatherings  of  considerable 
lustre;  occasions  when  dishes  of  richness  and  curiosity 
were  dissected;  when  the  surroundings  were  not  de- 
void of  glamour  and  surreptitious  pomp.  The  Club 
has  been  convened  in  many  different  places :  in  resorts  of 
pride  and  in  low-ceiled  reeky  taphouses ;  in  hotels  where 
those  clear  cubes  of  unprofitable  ice  knock  tinklingly  in 
the  goblets;  in  the  brightly  tinted  cellars  of  Greenwich 
Village;  in  the  saloons  of  ships.  But  the  Club  would 
give  a  false  impression  of  its  mind  and  heart  if  it  al- 
lowed any  one  to  suppose  that  Food  is  the  chief  object 
of  its  quest.  It  is  true  that  Man,  bitterly  examined, 
is  merely  a  vehicle  for  units  of  nourishing  combustion; 
but  on  those  occasions  when  the  Club  feels  most  truly 
Itself  it  rises  above  such  considerations. 

The  form  and  pressure  of  the  time  (to  repeat  Ham- 
let's phrase)  is  such  that  thoughtful  men — and  of  such 
the  Club  is  exclusively  composed:  men  of  great  heart, 
men  of  nice  susceptibility — are  continually  oppressed 
by  the  fumbling,  hasty,  and  insignificant  manner  in 
which  human  contacts  are  accomplished.  Let  us  even 
say,  masculine  contacts :  for  the  first  task  of  any  philoso- 
pher being  to  simplify  his  problem  so  that  he  can  ex- 
amine it  clearly  and  with  less  distraction,  the  Club 
makes  a  great  and  drastic  purge  by  sweeping  away 
altogether  the  enigmatic  and  frivolous  sex  and  disre- 
garding it,  at  any  rate  during  the  hours  of  convivial 
session.  The  Club  is  troubled  to  note  that  in  the  in- 
tolerable rabies  and  confusion  of  this  business  Me 
men  meet  merely  in  a  kind  of  convulsion  or  horrid 
passion  of  haste  and  perplexity.  We  see,  ever  and 

[481 


Creed  of  the  Club 

often,  those  in  whose  faces  we  discern  delightful  and 
considerable  secrets,  messages  of  just  import,  grotesque 
mirth,  or  improving  sadness.  In  their  bearing  and 
gesture,  even  in  hours  of  haste  and  irritation,  the  Club 
(with  its  trained  and  observant  eye)  notes  the  secret 
and  rare  sign  of  Thought.  Such  men  are  marked  by 
an  inexorable  follow-up  system.  Sooner  or  later 
their  telephones  ring;  secretaries  and  go-betweens  are 
brushed  aside;  they  are  bidden  to  appear  at  such  and 
such  a  time  and  place;  no  excuses  are  accepted.  Then 
follow  the  Consolations  of  Intercourse.  Conducted 
with  "shattering  candour"  (as  one  has  said  who  is  in 
spirit  a  member  of  this  Club,  though  not  yet,  alas, 
inducted),  the  meetings  may  sometimes  resolve  them- 
selves into  a  ribaldry,  sometimes  into  a  truthful  pursuit 
of  Beauty,  sometimes  into  a  mere  logomachy.  But  in 
these  symposiums,  unmarred  by  the  crude  claim  of 
duty,  the  Club  does  with  single-minded  resolve  pursue 
the  only  lasting  satisfaction  allowed  to  humanity, 
to  wit,  the  sympathetic  study  of  other  men's  minds. 

This  is  clumsily  said:  but  we  have  seen  moments 
when  eager  and  honourable  faces  round  the  board  ex- 
plained to  us  what  we  mean.  There  is  but  one  in- 
defeasible duty  of  man,  to  say  out  the  truth  that  is  in 
his  heart.  The  way  of  life  engendered  by  a  great  city 
and  a  modern  civilization  makes  it  hard  to  do  so.  It  is 
the  function  of  the  Club  to  say  to  the  City  and  to  Life 
Itself :  "  Stand  back !  Fair  play !  We  see  a  goodly  mat- 
ter inditing  in  our  friend's  spirit.  We  will  take  our 
ease  and  find  out  what  it  is." 

For  this  life  of  ours  (asserts  the  Club)  is  curiously 

[49] 


Plum  Pudding 

compounded  of  Beauty  and  Dross.  You  ascend  the 
Woolworth  Building,  let  us  say — one  of  man's  noblest 
and  most  poetic  achievements.  And  at  the  top,  what 
do  you  find,  just  before  going  out  upon  that  gallery  to 
spread  your  eye  upon  man's  reticulated  concerns?  Do 
you  find  a  little  temple  or  cloister  for  meditation,  or 
any  way  of  marking  in  your  mind  the  beauty  and  sig- 
nificance of  the  place?  No,  a  man  in  uniform  will  thrust 
into  your  hand  a  booklet  of  well-intentioned  description 
(but  of  unapproachable  typographic  ugliness)  and  you 
will  find  before  you  a  stall  for  the  sale  of  cheap  sou- 
venirs, ash  trays,  and  hideous  postcards.  In  such  ways 
do  things  of  Beauty  pass  into  the  custody  of  those 
unequipped  to  understand  them. 

The  Club  thinks  that  the  life  of  this  city,  brutally 
intense  and  bewildering,  has  yet  a  beauty  and  glamour 
and  a  secret  word  to  the  mind,  so  subtle  that  it  cannot 
be  closely  phrased,  but  so  important  that  to  miss  it  is 
to  miss  life  itself.  And  to  forfeit  an  attempt  to  see, 
understand,  and  mutually  communicate  this  loveliness 
is  to  forfeit  that  burning  spark  that  makes  men's 
spirits  worth  while.  To  such  halting  meditations  the 
Club  devotes  its  aspirations  undistressed  by  humorous 
protest.  If  this  be  treason.  .  .  ! 


50 


A  PREFACE  TO  THE  PROFESSION  OF  JOUR- 
NALISM 

(BEING  AN  ANSWER  TO  A  LETTER  FROM  A  COLLEGE 

STUDENT,  ASKING  ADVICE  AS  TO  TAKING  UP  WRITING 

AS  A  CAREER) 

YOUR  inquiry  is  congenial,  and  I  feel  guilty  of 
selfishness  in  answering  it  in  this  way.  But  he 
must  be  a  poor  workman,  whether  artisan  or  artist, 
who  does  not  welcome  an  excuse  now  and  then  for 
shutting  out  the  fascinating  and  maddening  com- 
plexity of  this  shining  world  to  concentrate  his  random 
wits  on  some  honest  and  self-stimulating  expression 
of  his  purpose. 

There  are  exceptions  to  every  rule;  but  writing,  if 
undertaken  as  a  trade,  is  subject  to  the  conditions  of 
all  other  trades.  The  apprentice  must  begin  with 
task- work;  he  must  please  his  employers  before  he  can 

[51] 


Plum  Pudding 

earn  the  right  to  please  himself.  Not  only  that,  he 
must  have  ingenuity  and  patience  enough  to  learn 
how  editors  are  pleased;  but  he  will  be  startled,  I  think, 
if  he  studies  their  needs,  to  see  how  eager  they  are  to 
meet  him  half  way.  This  necessary  docility  is  in  the 
long  run,  a  wholesome  physic,  because,  if  our  apprentice 
has  any  gallantry  of  spirit,  it  will  arouse  in  him  an  ex- 
hilarating irritation,  that  indignation  which  is  said  to 
be  the  forerunner  of  creation.  It  will  mean,  probably, 
a  period — perhaps  short,  perhaps  long,  perhaps  per- 
manent— of  rather  meagre  and  stinted  acquaintance 
with  the  genial  luxuries  and  amenities  of  life;  but 
(such  is  the  optimism  of  memory)  a  period  that  he 
will  always  look  back  upon  as  the  happiest  of  all.  It 
is  well  for  our  apprentice  if,  in  this  season,  he  has  a 
taste  for  cheap  tobacco  and  a  tactful  technique  in 
borrowing  money. 

The  deliberate  embrace  of  literature  as  a  career  in- 
volves very  real  dangers.  I  mean  dangers  to  the  spirit 
over  and  above  those  of  the  right-hand  trouser  pocket. 
For,  let  it  be  honestly  stated,  the  business  of  writing  is 
solidly  founded  on  a  monstrous  and  perilous  egotism. 
Himself,  his  temperament,  his  powers  of  observation 
and  comment,  his  emotions  and  sensibilities  and  am- 
bitions and  idiocies — these  are  the  only  monopoly  the 
writer  has.  This  is  his  only  capital,  and  with  glorious 
and  shameless  confidence  he  proposes  to  market  it. 
Let  him  make  the  best  of  it.  Continually  stooping 
over  the  muddy  flux  of  his  racing  mind,  searching  a 
momentary  flash  of  clearness  in  which  he  can  find 
mirrored  some  delicate  beauty  or  truth,  he  tosses  be- 

[52] 


A  Preface  to  the  Profession 

tween  the  alternatives  of  self-grandeur  and  self- 
disgust.  It  is  a  painful  matter,  this  endless  self -scru- 
tiny. We  are  all  familiar  with  the  addled  ego  of  litera- 
ture— the  writer  whom  constant  self-communion  has 
made  vulgar,  acid,  querulous,  and  vain.  And  yet  it  is 
remarkable  that  of  so  many  who  meddle  with  the  com- 
bustible passions  of  their  own  minds  so  few  are  blown  up. 
The  discipline  of  living  is  a  fine  cooling-jacket  for  the 
engine. 

It  is  essential  for  our  apprentice  to  remember  that, 
though  he  begin  with  the  vilest  hack-work — writing 
scoffing  paragraphs,  or  advertising  pamphlets,  or  free- 
lance snippets  for  the  papers — that  even  in  hack-work 
quality  shows  itself  to  those  competent  to  judge;  and 
he  need  not  always  subdue  his  gold  to  the  lead  in  which 
he  works.  Moreover,  conscience  and  instinct  are  sur- 
prisingly true  and  sane.  If  he  follows  the  suggestions 
of  his  own  inward,  he  will  generally  be  right.  Moreover 
again,  no  one  can  help  him  as  much  as  he  can  help  him- 
self. There  is  no  job  in  the  writing  world  that  he  cannot 
have  if  he  really  wants  it.  Writing  about  something 
he  intimately  knows  is  a  sound  principle.  Hugh 
Walpole,  that  greatly  gifted  novelist,  taught  school 
after  leaving  Cambridge,  and  very  sensibly  began  by 
writing  about  school-teaching.  If  you  care  to  see  how 
well  he  did  it,  read  "The  Gods  and  Mr.  Perrin."  I 
would  propose  this  test  to  the  would-be  writer:  Does 
he  feel,  honestly,  that  he  could  write  as  convincingly 
about  his  own  tract  of  life  (whatever  it  may  be)  as 
Walpole  wrote  about  that  boys'  school?  If  so,  he  has 
a  true  vocation  for  literature. 

[531 


Plum  Pudding 

The  first  and  most  necessary  equipment  of  any 
writer,  be  he  reporter,  advertising  copy-man,  poet,  or 
historian,  is  swift,  lively,  accurate  observation.  And 
since  consciousness  is  a  rapid,  shallow  river  which  we 
can  only  rarely  dam  up  deep  enough  to  go  swimming  and 
take  our  ease,  it  is  his  positive  need  (unless  he  is  a 
genius  who  can  afford  to  let  drift  away  much  of  his  only 
source  of  gold)  to  keep  a  note-book  handy  for  the  sieving 
and  skimming  of  this  running  stream.  Samuel  Butler 
has  good  advice  on  this  topic.  Of  ideas,  he  says,  you 
must  throw  salt  on  their  tails  or  they  fly  away  and  you 
never  see  their  bright  plumage  again.  Poems,  stories, 
epigrams,  all  the  happiest  freaks  of  the  mind,  flit  by 
on  wings  and  at  haphazard  instants.  They  must  be 
caught  in  air.  In  this  respect  one  thinks  American 
writers  ought  to  have  an  advantage  over  English,  for 
American  trousers  are  made  with  hip-pockets,  in  which 
a  small  note-book  may  so  comfortably  caress  the  nat- 
ural curvature  of  man. 

Fancy  is  engendered  in  the  eyes,  said  Shakespeare, 
and  is  with  gazing  fed.  By  fancy  he  meant  (I  suppose) 
love;  but  imagination  is  also  so  engendered.  Close, 
constant,  vivid,  and  compassionate  gazing  at  the  ways 
of  mankind  is  the  laboratory  manual  of  literature. 
But  for  most  of  us  we  may  gaze  until  our  eyeballs 
twitch  with  weariness;  unless  we  seize  and  hold  the 
flying  picture  in  some  steadfast  memorandum,  the 
greater  part  of  our  experience  dissolves  away  with  time. 
If  a  man  has  thought  sufficiently  about  the  arduous 
and  variously  rewarded  profession  of  literature  to  pro- 
pose seriously  to  follow  it  for  a  living,  he  will  already 

[54] 


A  Preface  to  the  Profession 

have  said  these  things  to  himself,  with  more  force  and 
pungency.  He  may  have  satisfied  himself  that  he  has 
a  necessary  desire  for  "self-expression,"  which  is  a 
parlous  state  indeed,  and  the  cause  of  much  literary 
villainy.  The  truly  great  writer  is  more  likely  to  write 
in  the  hope  of  expressing  the  hearts  of  others  than  his 
own.  And  there  are  other  desires,  too,  most  legitimate, 
that  he  may  feel.  An  English  humorist  said  recently 
in  the  preface  to  his  book:  "I  wrote  these  stories  to 
satisfy  an  inward  craving — not  for  artistic  expression, 
but  for  food  and  drink."  But  I  cannot  conscientiously 
advise  any  man  to  turn  to  writing  merely  as  a  means  of 
earning  his  victual  unless  he  should,  by  some  cheerful 
casualty,  stumble  upon  a  trick  of  the  You-know-me- 
Alfred  sort,  what  one  might  call  the  Attabuoyant 
style.  If  all  you  want  is  a  suggestion  as  to  some 
honest  way  of  growing  rich,  the  doughnut  industry  is 
not  yet  overcrowded;  and  people  will  stand  in  line 
to  pay  twenty-two  cents  for  a  dab  of  ice-cream  smeared 
with  a  trickle  of  syrup. 

To  the  man  who  approaches  writing  with  some  decent 
tincture  of  idealism  it  is  well  to  say  that  he  proposes  to 
use  as  a  trade  what  is,  at  its  best  and  happiest,  an  art 
and  a  recreation.  He  proposes  to  sell  his  mental  re- 
actions to  the  helpless  public,  and  he  proposes  not  only 
to  enjoy  himself  by  so  doing,  but  to  be  handsomely 
recompensed  withal.  He  cannot  complain  that  in  days 
when  both  honesty  and  delicacy  of  mind  are  none  too 
common  we  ask  him  to  bring  to  his  task  the  humility  of 
the  tradesman,  the  joy  of  the  sportsman,  the  conscience 
of  the  artist. 

[551 


Plum  Pudding 

And  if  he  does  so,  he  will  be  in  a  condition  to  profit 
by  these  fine  words  of  George  Santayana,  said  of  the 
poet,  but  applicable  to  workers  in  every  branch  of 
literature : 

"He  labours  with  his  nameless  burden  of  perception, 
and  wastes  himself  in  aimless  impulses  of  emotion  and 
reverie,  until  finally  the  method  of  some  art  offers  a 
vent  to  his  inspiration,  or  to  such  part  of  it  as  can  sur- 
vive the  test  of  time  and  the  discipline  of  expression. 
.  .  .  Wealth  of  sensation  and  freedom  of  fancy, 
which  make  an  extraordinary  ferment  in  his  ignorant 
heart,  presently  bubble  over  into  some  kind  of  utter- 
ance." 


[56] 


FULTON  STREET,  AND  WALT  WHITMAN 

AT  THE  suggestion  of  Mr.  Christopher  Clarke,  the 
Three  Hours  for  Lunch  Club  made  pilgrimage  to 
the  old  seafaring  tavern  at  No.  2  Fulton  Street,  and 
found  it  to  be  a  heavenly  place,  with  listing  brass-shod 
black  walnut  stairs  and  the  equally  black  and  delightful 
waiter  called  Oliver,  who  (said  Mr.  Clarke)  has  been 
there  since  1878. 

But  the  club  reports  that  the  swordfish  steak,  of 
which  it  partook  as  per  Mr.  Clarke's  suggestion,  did  not 
appeal  so  strongly  to  its  taste.  Swordfish  steak,  we 
feel,  is  probably  a  taste  acquired  by  long  and  diligent 
application.  At  the  first  trial  it  seemed  to  the  club  a 
bit  too  reptilian  in  flavour.  The  club  will  go  there 
again,  and  will  hope  to  arrive  in  time  to  grab  one  of 
those  tables  by  the  windows,  looking  out  over  the 
docks  and  the  United  Fruit  Company  steamer  which  is 
so  appropriately  named  the  Banan;  but  it  is  the  sense 
of  the  meeting  that  swordfish  steak  is  not  in  its  line. 

[57] 


Plum  Pudding 

The  club  retorts  to  Mr.  Clarke  by  asking  him  if  he 
knows  the  downtown  chophouse  where  one  may  climb 
sawdusted  stairs  and  sit  in  a  corner  beside  a  framed 
copy  of  the  New-York  Daily  Gazette  of  May  1,  1789,  at 
a  little  table  incised  with  the  initials  of  former  habitues, 
and  hold  up  toward  the  light  a  glass  of  the  clearest  and 
most  golden  and  amberlucent  cider  known  to  mankind, 
and  before  attacking  a  platter  of  cold  ham  and  Boston 
beans,  may  feel  that  smiling  sensation  of  a  man  about  to 
make  gradual  and  decent  advances  toward  a  ripe  and 
ruddy  appetite. 

Fulton  Street  has  always  been  renowned  for  its  tav- 
erns. The  Old  Shakespeare  Tavern  used  to  be  there, 
as  is  shown  by  the  tablet  at  No.  136  commemorating 
the  foundation  of  the  Seventh  Regiment.  The  club 
has  always  intended  to  make  more  careful  exploration  of 
Dutch  Street,  the  little  alley  that  runs  off  Fulton  Street 
on  the  south  side,  not  far  from  Broadway.  There  is  an 
eating  place  on  this  byway,  and  the  organization  plans 
to  patronize  it,  in  order  to  have  an  excuse  for  giving 
itself  the  sub-title  of  the  Dutch  Street  Club.  The  more 
famous  eating  houses  along  Fulton  Street  are  known  to 
all :  the  name  of  at  least  one  of  them  has  a  genial  Queen 
Anne  sound.  And  only  lately  a  very  seemly  coffee 
house  was  established  not  far  from  Fulton  and  Nassau. 
We  must  confess  our  pleasure  in  the  fact  that  this  place 
uses  as  its  motto  a  footnote  from  The  Spectator — "Who- 
ever wished  to  find  a  gentleman  commonly  asked 
not  where  he  resided,  but  which  coffee  house  he 
frequented." 

Among  the  many  things  to  admire  along  Fulton 

[58] 


Fulton  Street,  and  Walt  Whitman 

Street  (not  the  least  of  which  are  Dewey's  puzzling  per- 
petually fluent  grape-juice  bottle,  and  the  shop  where 
the  trained  ferrets  are  kept,  for  chasing  out  rats,  mice, 
and  cockroaches  from  your  house,  the  sign  says)  we  vote 
for  that  view  of  the  old  houses  along  the  south  side  of  the 
street,  where  it  widens  out  toward  the  East  River. 
This  vista  of  tall,  leaning  chimneys  seems  to  us  one  of 
the  most  agreeable  things  in  New  York,  and  we  wonder 
whether  any  artist  has  ever  drawn  it.  As  our  colleague 
Endymion  suggested,  it  would  make  a  fine  subject  for 
Walter  Jack  Duncan.  In  the  eastern  end  of  this  strip 
of  fine  old  masonry  resides  the  seafaring  tavern  we 
spoke  of  above;  formerly  known  as  Sweet's,  and  a 
great  place  of  resort  (we  are  told)  for  Brooklynites  in 
the  palmy  days  before  the  Bridge  was  opened,  when 
they  used  to  stop  there  for  supper  before  taking  the 
Fulton  Ferry  across  the  perilous  tideway. 

The  Fulton  Ferry — dingy  and  deserted  now — is  full 
of  fine  memories.  The  old  waiting  room,  with  its  or- 
nate carved  ceiling  and  fine,  massive  gas  brackets, 
peoples  itself,  in  one's  imagination,  with  the  lively  and 
busy  throngs  of  fifty  and  sixty  years  ago.  "My  life 
then  (1850-60)  was  curiously  identified  with  Fulton 
Ferry,  already  becoming  the  greatest  in  the  world  for 
general  importance,  volume,  variety,  rapidity,  and 
picturesqueness."  So  said  Walt  Whitman.  It  is  a 
curious  experience  to  step  aboard  one  of  the  boats  in  the 
drowsy  heat  of  a  summer  afternoon  and  take  the  short 
voyage  over  to  the  Brooklyn  slip,  underneath  one  of  the 
huge  piers  of  the  Bridge.  A  few  heavy  wagons  and 
heat-oppressed  horses  are  almost  the  only  other  passen- 

[59] 


Plum  Pudding 

gers.  Not  far  away  from  the  ferry,  on  the  Brooklyn 
side,  are  the  three  charmingly  named  streets — Cran- 
berry, Orange,  and  Pineapple — which  are  also  so  last- 
ingly associated  with  Walt  Whitman's  life.  It  strikes 
us  as  odd,  incidentally,  that  Walt,  who  loved  Brooklyn 
so  much,  should  have  written  a  phrase  so  capable  of 
humorous  interpretation  as  the  following:  "Human 
appearances  and  manners — endless  humanity  in  all  its 
phases — Brooklyn  also."  This  you  will  find  in  Walt's 
Prose  Works,  which  is  (we  suppose)  one  of  the  most  neg- 
lected of  American  classics. 

But  Fulton  Street,  Manhattan — in  spite  of  its  two 
greatest  triumphs:  Evelyn  Longman  Batchelder's  glo- 
rious figure  of  "Lightning,"  and  the  strictly  legal  "three 
grains  of  pepsin"  which  have  been  a  comfort  to  so  many 
stricken  invalids — is  a  mere  byway  compared  to  Fulton 
Street,  Brooklyn,  whose  long  bustling  channel  may  be 
followed  right  out  into  the  Long  Island 
pampas.  At  the  corner  of  Fulton  and 
Cranberry  streets  "Leaves  of  Grass" 
was  set  up  and  printed,  Walt  Whitman 
himself  setting  a  good  deal  of  the  type. 
Ninety-eight  Cranberry  Street,  we 
have  always  been  told,  was  the  address 
of  Andrew  and  James  Rome,  the  print- 
ers. The  house  at  that  corner  is  still 
numbered  98.  The  ground  floor  is  oc- 
cupied by  a  clothing  store,  a  fruit 
stand,  and  a  barber  shop.  The  build-; 
ing  looks  as  though  it  is  probably  the ' 
same  one  that  Walt  knew.  Opposite  it  is  a 

[601 


sign 


Fulton  Street,  and  Walt  Whitman 

where  the  comparatively  innocent  legend  BEN'S  PURE 
LAGER  has  been  deleted. 

The  pilgrim  on  Fulton  Street  will  also  want  to  have  a 
look  at  the  office  of  the  Brooklyn  Eagle,  that  famous 
paper  which  has  numbered  among  its  employees  two 
such  different  journalists  as  Walt  Whitman  and  Edward 
Bok.  There  are  many  interesting  considerations  to  be 
drawn  from  the  two  volumes  of  Walt's  writings  for  the 
Eagle,  which  were  collected  (under  the  odd  title  "The 
Gathering  of  the  Forces")  by  Cleveland  Rodgers  and 
John  Black.  We  have  always  been  struck  by  the  com- 
placent naivete  of  Walt's  judgments  on  literature  (writ- 
ten, perhaps,  when  he  was  in  a  hurry  to  go  swimming 
down  at  the  foot  of  Fulton  Street) .  Such  remarks  as  the 
following  make  us  ponder  a  little  sadly.  Walt  wrote : 

We  are  no  admirer  of  such  characters  as  Doctor 
Johnson.  He  was  a  sour,  malicious,  egotistical  man. 
He  was  a  sycophant  of  power  and  rank,  withal;  his 
biographer  narrates  that  he  "always  spoke  with  rough 
contempt  of  popular  liberty."  His  head  was  educated 
to  the  point  of  plus,  but  for  his  heart,  might  still  more 
unquestionably  stand  the  sign  minus.  He  insulted 
his  equals  .  .  .  and  tyrannized  over  his  inferiors. 
He  fawned  upon  his  superiors,  and,  of  course,  loved  to 
be  fawned  upon  himself.  .  .  .  Nor  were  the  freaks 
of  this  man  the  mere  "eccentricities  of  genius";  they 
were  probably  the  faults  of  a  vile,  low  nature.  His 
soul  was  a  bad  one. 

The  only  possible  comment  on  all  this  is  that  it  is 
absurd,  and  that  evidently  Walt  knew  very  little  about 
the  great  Doctor.  One  of  the  curious  things  about  Walt 
— and  there  is  no  man  living  who  admires  him  more 

[611 


Plum  Pudding 

than  we  do — is  that  he  requires  to  be  forgiven  more 
generously  than  any  other  great  writer.  There  is  no 
one  who  has  ever  done  more  grotesquely  unpardonable 
things  than  he — and  yet,  such  is  the  virtue  of  his  great, 
saline  simplicity,  one  always  pardons  them.  As  a  book 
reviewer,  to  judge  from  the  specimens  rescued  from  the 
Eagle  files  by  his  latest  editors,  he  was  uniquely  childish. 

Noting  the  date  of  Walt's  blast  on  Doctor  Johnson 
(December  7,  1846),  it  is  doubtful  whether  we  can  at- 
tribute the  irresponsibility  of  his  remarks  to  a  desire  to 
go  swimming. 

The  editors  of  this  collection  venture  the  suggestion 
that  the  lighter  pieces  included  show  Walt  as  "not  de- 
void of  humour.'*  We  fear  that  Walt's  waggishness 
was  rather  heavily  shod.  Here  is  a  sample  of  his  light- 
hearted  paragraphing  (the  italics  are  his) : — 

Carelessly  knocking  a  man's  eye  out  with  a  broken 
axe,  may  be  termed  a  bad  axe-i-dent. 

It  was  in  Leon  Bazalgette's  "Walt  Whitman"  that  we 
learned  of  Walt's  only  really  humorous  achievement; 
and  even  then  the  humour  was  unconscious.  It  seems 
that  during  the  first  days  of  his  life  as  a  journalist  in 
New  York,  Walt  essayed  to  compromise  with  Manna- 
hatta  by  wearing  a  frock  coat,  a  high  hat,  and  a  flower 
in  his  lapel.  We  regret  greatly  that  no  photo  of  Walt 
in  this  rig  has  been  preserved,  for  we  would  like  to  have 
seen  the  gentle  misery  of  his  bearing. 


[62] 


McSORLEY'S 

afternoon  we  have  been  thinking  how  pleasant 
A  it  would  be  to  sit  at  one  of  those  cool  tables  up  at 
McSorley's  and  write  our  copy  there.  We  have  always 
been  greatly  allured  by  Dick  Steele's  habit  of  writing 
his  Tatler  at  his  favourite  tavern.  You  remember  his 
announcement,  dated  April  12,  1709: 

All  accounts  of  gallantry,  pleasure,  and  entertain- 
ment, shall  be  under  the  article  of  White's  Chocolate- 
house;  poetry,  under  that  of  Will's  Coffee-house;  learn- 
ing, under  the  title  of  The  Grecian ;  foreign  and  domestic 
news,  you  will  have  from  Saint  James's  Coffee-house; 
and  what  else  I  have  to  offer  on  any  other  subject  shall 
be  dated  from  my  own  apartment. 

Sir  Dick — would  one  speak  of  him  as  the  first  col- 
yumist? — continued  by  making  what  is,  we  suppose, 

[63] 


Plum  Pudding 

one  of  the  earliest  references  in  literature  to  the  news- 
paper man's  "expense  account."  But  the  expenses  of 
the  reporter  two  centuries  ago  seem  rather  modest. 
Steele  said: 

I  once  more  desire  my  reader  to  consider  that  as  I 
cannot  keep  an  ingenious  man  to  go  daily  to  Will's 
under  twopence  each  day,  merely  for  his  charges;  to 
White's  under  sixpence;  nor  to  The  Grecian,  without 
allowing  him  some  plain  Spanish,  to  be  as  able  as  others 
at  the  learned  table;  and  that  a  good  observer  cannot 
speak  with  even  Kidney*  at  Saint  James's  without 
clean  linen:  I  say,  these  considerations  will,  I  hope, 
make  all  persons  willing  to  comply  with  my  humble 
request  of  a  penny-a-piece. 

But  what  we  started  to  say  was  that  if,  like  Dick 
Steele,  we  were  in  the  habit  of  dating  our  stuff  from 
various  inns  around  the  town,  our  choice  for  a  quiet 
place  in  which  to  compose  items  of  "gallantry,  pleasure, 
and  entertainment"  would  be  McSorley's— "The  Old 
House  at  Home" — up  on  Seventh  Street.  We  had 
feared  that  this  famous  old  cabin  of  cheer  might  have 
gone  west  in  the  recent  evaporation;  but  rambling 
round  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  Cooper  Union  we 
saw  its  familiar  doorway  with  a  shock  of  glad  surprise. 
After  all,  there  is  no  reason  why  the  old-established 
houses  should  not  go  on  doing  a  good  business  on  a 
Volstead  basis.  It  has  never  been  so  much  a  question 
of  what  a  man  drinks  as  the  atmosphere  in  which  he 
drinks  it.  Atrocious  cleanliness  and  glitter  and  raw 
naked  marble  make  the  soda  fountains  a  disheartening 

"Evidently  the  bus  boy. 

[641 


McSorley's 

place  to  the  average  male.  He  likes  a  dark,  low-ceil- 
inged,  and  not  too  obtrusively  sanitary  place  to  take 
his  ease.  At  McSorley's  is  everything  that  the  innocent 
fugitive  from  the  world  requires.  The  great  amiable 
cats  that  purr  in  the  back  room.  The  old  pictures 
and  playbills  on  the  walls.  The  ancient  clocks  that 
hoarsely  twang  the  hours.  We  cannot  imagine  a  hap- 
pier place  to  sit  down  with  a  pad  of  paper  and  a  well- 
sharpened  pencil  than  at  that  table  in  the  corner  by  the 
window.  Or  the  table  just  under  that  really  lovely 
little  portrait  of  Robert  Burns — would  there  be  any 
more  propitious  place  in  New  York  at  which  to  fashion 
verses?  There  would  be  no  interruptions,  such  as  make 
versifying  almost  impossible  in  a  newspaper  office. 
The  friendly  bartenders  in  their  lilac-coloured  shirts  are 
wise  and  gracious  men.  They  would  not  break  in  upon 
one's  broodings.  Every  now  and  then,  while  the  hot 
sun  smote  the  awnings  outside,  there  would  be  another 
china  mug  of  that  one-half-of-1-per-cent.  ale,  which 
seems  to  us  very  good.  We  repeat:  we  don't  care  so 
much  what  we  drink  as  the  surroundings  among  which 
we  drink  it.  We  are  not,  if  you  will  permit  the  phrase, 
sot  in  our  ways.  We  like  the  spirit  of  McSorley's, 
which  is  decent,  dignified,  and  refined.  No  club  has  an 
etiquette  more  properly  self-respecting. 

One  does  not  go  to  McSorley's  without  a  glimpse  at 
that  curious  old  red  pile  Bible  House.  It  happened  this 
way :  Our  friend  Endymion  was  back  from  his  vacation 
and  we  were  trying  to  celebrate  it  in  modest  fashion. 
We  were  telling  him  all  the  things  that  had  happened 
since  he  went  away — that  Bob  Holliday  had  had  a  for- 

[63] 


Plum  Pudding 

tieth  birthday,  and  Frank  Shay  had  published  his 
bibliography  of  Walt  Whitman,  and  all  that  sort  of 
thing;  and  in  our  mutual  excitement  Endymion  whisked 
too  swiftly  round  a  corner  and  caught  his  jacket  on  a 
sharp  door-latch  and  tore  it.  Inquiring  at  Astor 
Place's  biggest  department  store  as  to  where  we  could 
get  it  mended,  they  told  us  to  go  to  "Mr.  Wright  the 
weaver"  on  the  sixth  floor  of  Bible  House,  and  we  did 
so.  On  our  way  back,  avoiding  the  ancient  wire  rope 
elevator  (we  know  only  one  other  lift  so  delightfully 
mid-Victorian,  viz.,  one  in  Boston,  that  takes  you  up- 
stairs to  see  Edwin  Edgett,  the  gentle-hearted  literary 
editor  of  the  Boston  Transcript},  we  walked  down  the 
stairs,  peeping  into  doorways  in  great  curiosity.  The 
whole  building  breathed  a  dusky  and  serene  quaintness 
that  pricks  the  imagination.  It  is  a  bit  like  the  shop 
in  Edinburgh  (on  the  corner  of  the  Leith  Walk  and  An- 
tigua Street,  if  we  remember)  that  R.  L.  S.  described 
in  "A  Penny  Plain  and  Twopence  Coloured" — "it 
was  dark  and  smelt  of  Bibles."  We  looked  in  at  the 
entrance  to  the  offices  of  the  Christian  Herald.  The 
Bowling  Green  thought  that  what  he  saw  was  two 
young  ladies  in  close  and  animated  converse;  but 
Endymion  insisted  that  it  was  one  young  lady  doing 
her  hair  in  front  of  a  large  mirror.  "Quite  a  pretty 
little  picture,"  said  Endymion.  We  argued  about  this 
as  we  went  down  the  stairs.  Finally  we  went  back 
to  make  sure.  Endymion  was  right.  Even  in  the 
darkness  of  Bible  House,  we  agreed,  romance  holds 
sway.  And  then  we  found  a  book  shop  on  the  ground 
floor  of  Bible  House.  One  of  our  discoveries  there  was 

[66] 


McSorley's 

"Little  Mr.  Bouncer/*  by  Cuthbert  Bede— a  com- 
panion volume  to  "Mr.  Verdant  Green." 

But  Dick  Steele's  idea  of  writing  his  column  from  dif- 
ferent taverns  round  the  city  is  rather  gaining  ground 
in  our  affections.  There  would  be  no  more  exciting 
way  of  spending  a  fortnight  or  so  than  in  taking  a 
walking  tour  through  the  forests  of  New  York,  camping 
for  the  night  wherever  we  happened  to  find  ourself  at 
dark,  Adam-and-Evesdropping  as  we  went,  and  giving 
the  nearest  small  boy  fifty  cents  to  take  our  copy  down 
to  the  managing  editor.  Some  of  our  enterprising 
clients,  who  are  not  habitual  commuters  and  who  live  in 
a  state  of  single  cussedness,  might  try  it  some  time. 

The  only  thing  we  missed  at  McSorley's,  we  might 
add,  was  the  old-time  plate  of  onions.  But  then  we 
were  not  there  at  lunch  time,  and  the  pungent  fruit 
may  have  been  hidden  away  in  the  famous  tall  ice  box. 
Hutchins  Hapgood  once  said,  in  an  article  about  Mc- 
Sorley's in  Harper's  Weekly:  "The  wives  of  the  men  who 
frequent  McSorley's  always  know  where  their  husbands 
have  been.  There  is  no  mistaking  a  McSorley  onion." 
He  was  right.  The  McSorley  onion — "rose  among 
roots" — was  sui  generis.  It  had  a  reach  and  au- 
thenticity all  its  own. 

We  have  said  a  good  deal,  now  and  then,  about  some 
of  the  taverns  and  chophouses  we  enjoy;  but  the  one 
that  tingles  most  strongly  in  our  bosom  is  one  that 
doesn't  exist.  That  is  the  chophouse  that  might  be 
put  in  the  cellar  of  that  glorious  old  round-towered 
building  at  59  Ann  Street. 

As  you  go  along  Ann  Street,  you  will  come,  between 
[671 


Plum  Pudding 

numbers  57  and  61,  to  an  old  passage-way  running 
down  to  a  curious  courtyard,  which  is  tenanted  mostly 
by  carpenters  and  iron-workers,  and  by  a  crowded  store 
which  seems  to  be  a  second-hand  ship-chandlery,  for  old 
sea-boots,  life  preservers,  fenders,  ship's  lanterns,  and 
flags  hang  on  the  wall  over  the  high  stairway.  In  the 
cellars  are  smithies  where  you  will  see  the  bright  glare 
of  a  forge  and  men  with  faces  gleaming  in  tawny  light 
pulling"shining  irons  out  of  the  fire.  The  whole  place  is 
too  fascinating  to  be  easily  described.  That  round- 
tower  house  is  just  our  idea  of  the  right  place  for  a  quiet 
tavern  or  club,  where  one  would  go  in  at  lunch  time, 
walk  over  a  sawdusted  floor  to  a  table  bleached  by  many 
litres  of  slopovers,  light  a  yard  of  clay,  and  call  for 
a  platter  of  .beefsteak  pie.  The  downtown  region  is 
greatly  in  need  of  the  kind  of  place  we  have  in  mind,  and 
if  any  one  cares  to  start  a  chophouse  in  that  heavenly 
courtyard,  the  Three  Hours  for  Lunch  Club  pledges  it- 
self to  attend  regularly. 


168] 


A  PORTRAIT 

MY  IDEA  of  life,"  said  my  friend  S ,  "would 
be  to  have  a  nice  lawn  running  down  to  the 
water,    several   deck-chairs,   plenty   of   tobacco,   and 
three  or  four  of  us  to  sit  there  all  day  long  and  listen 

to  B talk." 

I  suppose  that  B , —  I  wish  I  could  name  him, 

but  it  would  be  an  indecency  to  do  so,  for  part  of  his 
charm  is  his  complete  unconsciousness  of  the  affection, 
and  even  adoration,  of  the  little  group  of  younger  men 

who  call  themselves  his  "fans" — I  suppose  that  B 's 

talk  is  as  nearly  Johnsonian  in  virtue  and  pungency 
as  any  spoken  wisdom  now  hearable  in  this  country. 
To  know  him  is,  hi  the  absolute  truth  of  that  enduring 
phrase,  a  liberal  education.  To  his  simplicity,  his 

[69] 


Plum  Pudding 

valorous  militancy  for  truth,  he  joins  the  mind  of 
a  great  scholar,  the  placable  spirit  of  an  eager 
child. 

I  said  "Johnsonian  " — yet  even  in  the  great  Doctor  as 
we  have  him  recorded  there  were  a  certain  truculence 

and  vehemence  that  are  a  little  foreign  to  B 's  habit. 

Fearless  champion  as  he  is,  there  is  always  a  gentleness 
about  him.  Even  when  his  voice  deepens  and  he  is 
well  launched  on  a  long  argument,  he  is  never  brutally 
dogmatic,  never  cruelly  discourteous. 

The  beauty  of  B 's  talk,  the  quality  that  would 

make  it  a  delight  to  listen  to  him  all  a  summer  after- 
noon, is  that  he  gives,  unconsciously,  a  perfect  ex- 
hibition of  a  perfect  process,  a  great  mind  in  motion. 
His  mind  is  too  full,  too  crowded,  too  ratiocinative, 
for  easy  and  frugal  utterance.  Sometimes,  unless 
one  is  an  acute  listener,  he  is  almost  incoherent  in 
his  zeal  to  express  all  the  phases  and  facets  of  the 
thought  that  flashes  upon  him.  And  yet,  if  one  could 
(unknown  to  him)  have  a  stenographer  behind  the 
arras  to  take  it  all  down,  so  that  his  argument  could 
be  analyzed  at  leisure,  it  would  show  its  anatomical 
knitting  and  structure.  Do  you  remember  how 
Burke's  speech  on  Conciliation  was  parsed  and  sub- 
headed  in  the  preface  to  the  school-texts  ?  Just  so,  in  I 
and  II  and  III,  A.  B.  and  C,  (a),  (£),  and  (y),  i,  ii,  and 
iii,  we  could  articulate  the  strict  and  bony  logic  that 

vertebrates  B 's  talk.  Reservations,  exceptions, 

qualifications,  parentheses,  sub-clauses,  and  humorous 
paraphrases  swim  upon  him  as  he  goes,  and  he  deals 
with  each  as  it  comes.  Sometimes,  one  thinks,  he.' 

[70] 


A  Portrait 

has  lost  the  spine  of  the  discourse,  is  mazed  in  a  gang- 
lion of  nerves  and  sinews.  But  no!  give  him  time 
and  back  he  comes  to  the  marrow  of  his  theme ! 

What  a  happiness  this  is  to  listen  to — he  (bless  his 
heart)  now  and  then  apologizing  for  his  copiousness, 
little  dreaming  that  we  are  all  better  men  for  hearing 
him;  that  his  great  gray  head  and  clear  kindly  eye 
("His  mild  and  magnificent  eye":  whose  is  that 
phrase?)  are  to  us  a  symbol  of  Socratic  virtue  and 
power;  that  there  is  not  one  of  us  who,  after  an  hour 
or  so  with  him,  does  not  depart  with  private  resolutions 
of  honour  and  fidelity  to  wisdom .  How  he  irrigates  his 
subject,  whatever  it  is. 

I'll  tell  you  who  Time  gallops  withal!  It  is  when 

B sits  down  at  a  corner  table  of  some  chophouse, 

and  (the  rest  of  us  seeing  to  it  that  the  meal  gets  or- 
dered, and  now  and  then  saying  something  about  the 
food  so  that  he  will  remember  to  eat)  we  marvel  to 
watch  the  glow  and  business  of  a  mind  so  great  paired 
with  a  heart  so  simple. 

"My  idea  is  this,"  he  says,  "subject  to  an  exception 
which  I  will  state  in  a  moment."  Taking  up  his 
exception,  he  makes  it  so  lucid,  so  pregnant,  so  com- 
prehensive, so  irresistible,  that  it  seems  to  us  the  whole 
and  satisfying  dogma;  and  then,  suddenly  turning  it 
inside-outward,  he  reveals  the  seams,  and  we  remem- 
ber that  it  was  only  a  trifling  nexus  in  the  rational  series. 
He  returns  to  his  main  thesis,  and  other  counterpoising 
arguments  occur  to  him.  He  outlines  them,  with  deli- 
cious JSsopian  sagacity.  "Of  course  this  analysis  is 
only  quantitative,  not  qualitative,"  he  says.  "But 

[71] 


Plum  Pudding 

I  will  now  restate  my  position  with  all  the  necessary 
reservations,  and  we'll  see  if  it  will  hold  water." 

We  smile,  and  look  at  each  other  slyly,  in  the  sheer 
happiness  of  enjoying  a  perfect  work  of  art.  He  must 
be  a  mere  quintain,  a  poor  lifeless  block,  who  does  not 
revel  in  such  an  exhibition,  where  those  two  rare  quali- 
ties of  mind — honesty  and  agility — are  locked  in  one. 

Of  course — it  is  hardly  necessary  to  say — we  do  not 
always  agree  with  everything  he  says.  But  we  could 
not  disagree  with  him;  for  we  see  that  his  broad, 
shrewd,  troubled  spirit  could  take  no  other  view,  arising 
out  of  the  very  multitude  and  swarm  and  pressure 
of  his  thought.  Those  who  plod  diligently  and  nar- 
rowly along  a  country  lane  may  sometimes  reach  the 
destination  less  fatigued  than  the  more  conscientious 
and  passionate  traveller  who  quarters  the  fields  and 
beats  the  bounds,  intent  to  leave  no  covert  unscru- 
tinized.  But  in  him  we  see  and  love  and  revere 
something  rare  and  precious,  not  often  found  in  our 
present  way  of  life;  in  matters  concerning  the  happi- 
ness of  others,  a  devoted  spirit  of  unrivalled  wisdom; 
in  those  pertaining  to  himself,  a  child's  unblemished 
innocence.  The  perplexities  of  others  are  his  daily 
study;  his  own  pleasures,  a  constant  surprise. 


[72 


GOING  TO  PHILADELPHIA 


EVERY  intelligent   New  Yorker  should   be  com- 
pelled, once  in  so  often,  to  run  over  to  Philadel- 
phia and  spend  a  few  days  quietly  and  observantly 
prowling. 

Any  lover  of  America  is  poor  indeed  unless  he  has 
savoured  and  meditated  the  delicious  contrast  of  these 
two  cities,  separated  by  so  few  miles  and  yet  by  a 
whole  world  of  philosophy  and  metaphysics.  But  he 
is  a  mere  tyro  of  the  two  who  has  only  made  the  voyage 
by  the  P.  R.  R.  The  correct  way  to  go  is  by  the  Read- 
ing, which  makes  none  of  those  annoying  intermediate 
stops  at  Newark,  Trenton,  and  so  on,  none  of  that  long 

[73] 


Plum  Pudding 

detour  through  West  Philadelphia,  starts  you  off  with 
a  ferry  ride  and  a  background  of  imperial  campaniles 
and  lilac-hazed  cliffs  and  summits  in  the  superb  morn- 
ing light.  And  the  Reading  route,  also,  takes  you 
through  a  green  Shakespearean  land  of  beauty,  oddly 
different  from  the  flat  scrubby  plains  traversed  by  the 
Pennsy.  Consider,  if  you  will,  the  hills  of  the  idyllic 
Huntington  Valley  as  you  near  Philadelphia;  or  the 
little  white  town  of  Hope  well,  N.  J.,  with  its  pointing 
church  spire.  We  have  often  been  struck  by  the  fact 
that  the  foreign  traveller  between  New  York  and  Wash- 
ington on  the  P.  R.  R.  must  think  America  the  most 
flat,  dreary,  and  uninteresting  countryside  in  the  world. 
Whereas  if  he  would  go  from  Jersey  City  by  the  joint 
Reading — Central  New  Jersey — B.  &  O.  route,  how 
different  he  would  find  it.  No,  we  are  not  a  Reading 
stockholder. 

We  went  over  to  Philly,  after  having  been  unfaith- 
ful to  her  for  too  many  months.  Now  we  have  had 
from  time  to  time,  most  menacing  letters  from  indig- 
nant clients,  protesting  that  we  have  been  unfaithful 
to  all  the  tenets  and  duties  of  a  Manhattan  journalist 
because  we  have  with  indecent  candour  confessed  an 
affection  for  both  Brooklyn  and  Philadelphia.  We 
lay  our  cards  on  the  table.  We  can't  help  it.  Phila- 
delphia was  the  first  large  city  we  ever  knew,  and  how 
she  speaks  to  us!  And  there's  a  queer  thing  about 
Philadelphia,  hardly  believable  to  the  New  Yorker 
who  has  never  conned  her  with  an  understanding  eye. 
You  emerge  from  the  Reading  Terminal  (or,  if  you 
will,  from  Broad  Street  Station)  with  just  a  little 

[74] 


Going  to  Philadelphia 

superbness  of  mood,  just  a  tinge  of  worldly  disdain, 
as  feeling  yourself  fresh  from  the  grandeur  of  Man- 
hattan and  showing  perhaps  (you  fondly  dream) 
some  pride  of  metropolitan  bearing.  Very  well. 
Within  half  an  hour  you  will  be  apologizing  for  New 
York.  In  their  quiet,  serene,  contented  way  those 
happy  Philadelphians  will  be  making  you  a  little  shame- 
faced of  the  bustling  madness  of  our  heaven-touching 
Babel.  Of  course,  your  secret  adoration  of  Man- 
hattan, the  greatest  wild  poem  ever  begotten  by  the 
heart  of  man,  is  not  readily  transmissible.  You  will 
stammer  something  of  what  it  means  to  climb 
upward  from  the  subway  on  a  spring  morning  and 
see  that  golden  figure  over  Fulton  Street  spreading 
its  shining  wings  above  the  new  day.  And  they  will 
smile  gently,  that  knowing,  amiable  Philadelphia 
smile. 

We  were  false  to  our  credo  in  that  we  went  via  the 
P.  R.  R.,  but  we  were  compensated  by  a  man  who  was 
just  behind  us  at  the  ticket  window.  He  asked  for  a 
ticket  to  Asbury  Park.  "Single,  or  return?"  asked  the 
clerk.  "I  don't  believe  I'll  ever  come  back,"  he  said, 
but  with  so  unconsciously  droll  an  accent  that  the 
ticket  seller  screamed  with  mirth. 

There  was  something  very  thrilling  in  strolling  again 
along  Chestnut  Street,  watching  all  those  delightful 
people  who  are  so  unconscious  of  their  characteristic 
qualities.  New  York  has  outgrown  that  stage  entirely : 
New  Yorkers  are  conscious  of  being  New  Yorkers,  but 
Philadelphians  are  Philadelphians  without  knowing  it; 
and  hence  their  unique  delightfumess  to  the  observer. 

[75] 


Plum  Pudding 

Nothing  seemed  to  us  at  all  changed — except  that  the 
trolleys  have  raised  their  fare  from  five  cents  to  seven. 
The  Liberty  Toggery  Shop  down  on  Chestnut  Street 
was  still  "Going  Out  of  Business,*'  just  as  it  was  a 
couple  of  years  ago.  Philip  Warner,  the  famous 
book  salesman  at  Leary's  Old  Book  Store,  was  out  hav- 
ing lunch,  as  usual.  The  first  book  our  eye  fell  upon 
was  "The  Experiences  of  an  Irish  R.  M.,"  which  we 
had  hunted  in  vain  in  these  parts.  The  only  other 
book  that  caught  our  eye  particularly  was  a  copy 
of  "Patrins,"  by  Louise  Guiney,  which  we  saw  a 
lady  carrying  on  the  campus  of  the  University  of 
Pennsylvania. 

But  perhaps  New  York  exerts  its  own  fascination 
upon  Philadelphians,  too.  For  when  we  returned  we 
selfishly  persuaded  a  friend  of  ours  to  ride  with  us  on 
the  train  so  that  we  might  imbibe  some  of  his  ripe 
orotund  philosophy,  which  we  had  long  been  deprived 
of.  He  is  a  merciless  Celt,  and  all  the  way  over  he 
preached  us  a  cogent  sermon  on  our  shortcomings  and 
backslidings.  Faithful  are  the  wounds  of  a  friend,  and 
it  was  nice  to  know  that  there  was  still  someone  who 
cared  enough  for  us  to  give  us  a  sound  cursing.  Be- 
tween times,  while  we  were  catching  breath,  he  ex- 
patiated upon  the  fact  that  New  York  is  death  and 
damnation  to  the  soul;  but  when  we  got  to  Manhat- 
tan Transfer  he  suddenly  abandoned  his  intended  plan 
of  there  catching  the  next  train  back  to  the  land  of 
Penn.  A  curious  light  began  to  gleam  in  his  mild 
eyes;  he  settled  his  hat  firmly  upon  his  head  and  strode 
out  into  the  Penn  Station.  "I  think  I'll  go  out  and 

[76] 


Going  to  Philadelphia 

look  round  a  bit,"  he  said.     We  wonder  whether  he  has 
gone  back  yet? 

II 

THE  OTHER  day  we  had  a  chance  to  go  to  Phila- 
delphia in  the  right  way — by  the  Reading,  the  P. 
and  R.,  the  Peaceful  and  Rapid.  As  one  of  our 
missions  in  life  is  to  persuade  New  York  and  Phila- 
delphia to  love  one  another,  we  will  tell  you  about 
it. 

Ah,  the  jolly  old  Reading!  Take  the  10  o'clock 
ferry  from  Liberty  Street,  and  as  the  Plainfield  kicks 
herself  away  from  the  slip  with  a  churning  of  cream 
and  silver,  study  Manhattan's  profile  in  the  downpour 
of  morning  sun.  That  winged  figure  on  the  Tel  and  Tel 
Building  (the  loveliest  thing  in  New  York,  we  insist) 
is  like  a  huge  and  queerly  erect  golden  butterfly 
perched  momently  in  the  blue.  The  10:12  train  from 
Jersey  City  we  call  the  Max  Beerbohm  Special  because 
there  are  Seven  Men  in  the  smoker.  No,  the  Reading 
is  never  crowded.  (Two  more  men  did  get  on  at  Eliza- 
beth.) You  can  make  yourself  comfortable,  put  your 
coat,  hat,  and  pipecleaners  on  one  seat,  your  books, 
papers,  and  matches  on  another.  Here  is  the  stout  con- 
ductor whom  we  used  to  know  so  well  by  sight,  with  his 
gold  insignia.  He  has  forgotten  that  we  once  travelled 
with  him  regularly,  and  very  likely  he  wonders  why  we 
beam  so  cheerfully.  We  flash  down  the  Bayonne  penin- 
sula, with  a  glimpse  of  the  harbour,  Staten  Island  in 
the  distance,  a  schooner  lying  at  anchor.  Then  we 
cross  Newark  Bay,  pure  opaline  in  a  clear,  pale  blue 

[77] 


Plum  Pudding 

light.  H.  G.  Dwight  is  the  only  other  chap  who  really 
enjoys  Newark  Bay  the  way  it  deserves  to  be.  He 
wrote  a  fine  poem  about  it  once. 

But  we  had  one  great  disappointment.  For  an 
hour  or  so  we  read  a  rubbishy  novel,  thinking  to  our- 
self  that  when  the  Max  Beerbohm  Express  reached 
that  lovely  Huntington  Valley  neighbourhood,  we 
would  lay  down  the  book  and  study  the  scenery,  which 
we  know  by  heart.  When  we  came  to  the  Neshaminy, 
that  blithe  little  green  river,  we  were  all  ready  to  be 
thrilled.  And  then  the  train  swung  away  to  the  left 
along  the  cut-off  to  Wayne  Junction  and  we  missed 
our  bright  Arcadia.  We  had  wanted  to  see  again  the 
little  cottage  at  Meadowbrook  (so  like  the  hunting 
lodge  in  the  forest  in  "The  Prisoner  of  Zenda")  which 
a  suasive  real-estate  man  once  tried  to  rent  to  us. 
(Philadelphia  realtors  are  no  less  ingenious  than  the 
New  York  species.)  We  wanted  to  see  again  the  old 
barn,  rebuilt  by  an  artist,  at  Bethayres,  which  he  also 
tried  to  rent  to  us.  We  wanted  to  see  again  the  queer 
"desirable  residence"  (near  the  gas  tanks  at  Marathon) 
which  he  did  rent  us.  But  we  had  to  content  ourself 
with  the  scenery  along  the  cut-off,  which  is  pleasant 
enough  in  its  way — there  is  a  brown-green  brook  along 
a  valley  where  a  buggy  was  crawling  down  a  lane 
among  willow  trees  in  a  wealth  of  sunlight.  And  the 
dandelions  are  all  out  in  those  parts.  Yes,  it  was  a 
lovely  morning.  We  found  ourself  pierced  by  the 
kind  of  mysterious  placid  melancholy  that  we  only  enjoy 
to  the  full  in  a  Reading  smoker,  when,  for  some  un- 
known reason,  hymn  tunes  come  humming  into  our 

[78] 


Going  to  Philadelphia 

head  and  we  are  alarmed  to  notice  ourself  falling  in 
love  with  humanity  as  a  whole. 

We  could  write  a  whole  newspaper  page  about  trav- 
elling to  Philly  on  the  Reading.  Consider  those 
little  back  gardens  near  Wayne  Junction,  how  delight- 
fully clean,  neat,  domestic,  demure.  Compare  enter- 
ing New  York  toward  the  Grand  Central,  down  that 
narrow  frowning  alleyway  of  apartment  house  backs, 
with  imprisoned  children  leaning  from  barred  windows. 
But  as  you  spin  toward  Wayne  Junction  you  see  acres 
and  acres  of  trim  little  houses,  each  with  a  bright  patch 
of  turf.  Here  is  a  woman  in  a  blue  dress  and  white 
cap,  busily  belabouring  a  rug  on  the  grass.  The  bank 
of  the  cutting  by  Wayne  Junction  is  thick  with  a 
tangle  of  rosebushes  which  will  presently  be  in  blossom; 
we  know  them  well.  Spring  Garden  Street:  if  you 
know  where  to  look  you  can  catch  a  blink  of  Edgar 
Allan  Poe's  little  house.  Through  a  jumble  of  queer 
old  brick  chimneys  and  dormers,  and  here  we  are  at  the 
Reading  Terminal,  with  its  familiar  bitter  smell  of  coal 
gas. 

Of  course  we  stop  to  have  a  look  at  the  engine,  one 
of  those  splendid  Reading  locos  with  the  three  great 
driving  wheels.  Splendid  things,  the  big  Reading  locos ; 
when  they  halt  they  pant  so  cheerfully  and  noisily, 
like  huge  dogs,  much  louder  than  any  other  engines. 
We  always  expect  to  see  an  enormous  red  tongue  run- 
ning in  and  out  over  the  cowcatcher.  Vast  thick 
pants,  as  the  poet  said  in  "Khubla  Khan."  We  can't 
remember  if  he  wore  them,  or  breathed  them,  but  there 
it  is  in  the  poem;  look  it  up.  Reading  engineers,  too, 

[791 


Plum  Pudding 

always  give  us  a  sense  of  security.  They  have  gray 
hair,  cropped  very  close.  They  have  a  benign  look, 
rather  like  Walt  Whitman  if  he  were  shaved.  We 
wrote  a  poem  about  one  of  them  once,  Tom  Hartzell, 
who  used  to  take  the  5:12  express  out  of  Jersey 
City. 

Philadelphia,  incidentally,  is  the  only  large  city 
where  the  Dime  Museum  business  still  flourishes. 
For  the  first  thing  we  see  on  leaving  the  Terminal  is 
that  the  old  Bingham  Hotel  is  now  The  World  's 
Museum,  given  over  to  Ursa  the  Bear  Girl  and  similar 
excitements.  But  where  is  the  beautiful  girl  with  slick 
dark  hair  who  used  to  be  at  the  Reading  terminal 
news-stand? 

How  much  more  we  could  tell  you  about  travelling 
on  the  Reading!  We  would  like  to  tell  you  about  the 
queer  assortment  of  books  we  brought  back  with  us. 
(There  were  twelve  men  in  the  smoker,  coming  home.) 
We  could  tell  how  we  tried  to  buy,  without  being  ob- 
served, a  magazine  which  we  will  call  Foamy  Fiction, 
in  order  to  see  what  the  new  editor  (a  friend  of  ours)  is 
printing.  Also,  we  always  buy  a  volume  of  Gissing 
when  we  go  to  Philly,  and  this  time  we  found  "In  the 
Year  of  Jubilee"  in  the  shop  of  Jerry  Cullen,  the  de- 
lightful bookseller  who  used  to  be  so  redheaded,  but  is 
getting  over  it  now  in  the  most  logical  way.  We  could 
tell  you  about  the  lovely  old  whitewashed  stone  farm- 
houses (with  barns  painted  red  on  behalf  of  Schenk's 
Mandrake  Pills)  and  about  the  famous  curve  near 
Roelofs,  so  called  because  the  soup  rolls  off  the  table  in 
the  dining  car  when  they  take  the  curve  at  full  speed; 

[80] 


Going  to  Philadelphia 

and  about  Bound  Brook,  which  has  a  prodigious  dump 
of  tin  cans  that  catches  the  setting  sunlight 

It  makes  us  sad  to  think  that  a  hundred  years  hence 
people  will  be  travelling  along  that  road  and  never 
know  how  much  we  loved  it.  They  will  be  doing  so 
to-morrow,  too;  but  it  seems  more  mournful  to  think 
about  the  people  a  hundred  years  hence. 

When  we  got  back  to  Jersey  City,  and  stood  on 
the  front  end  of  the  ferryboat,  Manhattan  was  piling 
up  all  her  jewels  into  the  cold  green  dusk.  There 
were  a  few  stars,  just  about  as  many  as  there  are 
passengers  in  a  Reading  smoker.  There  was  one  big 
star  directly  over  Brooklyn,  and  another  that  seemed 
to  be  just  above  Plainfield.  We  pondered,  as  the  ferry 
slid  toward  its  hutch  at  Liberty  Street,  that  there  were 
no  stars  above  Manhattan.  Just  at  that  moment — 
five  minutes  after  seven — the  pinnacle  of  the  Wool- 
worth  blossomed  a  ruby  red.  New  York  makes  her 
own. 

Ill 

You  never  know  when  an  adventure  is  going  to 
begin.  But  on  a  train  is  a  good  place  to  lie  in  wait  for 
them.  So  we  sat  down  in  the  smoker  of  the  10  A.  M. 
Eastern  Standard  Time  P.  R.  R.  express  to  Philadel- 
phia, in  a  receptive  mood. 

At  Manhattan  Transfer  the  brakeman  went  through 
the  train,  crying  in  a  loud,  clear,  emphatic  barytone: 
"Next  stop  for  this  train  is  North  Philadelphia!" 

We  sat  comfortably,  and  in  that  mood  of  secretly 
exhilarated  mental  activity  which  is  induced  by  riding 
on  a  fast  train.  We  were  looking  over  the  June  Allan- 

[81] 


Plum  Pudding 

tic.  We  smiled  gently  to  ourself  at  that  unconscious 
breath  of  New  England  hauteur  expressed  in  the  pub- 
lisher's announcement,  "The  edition  of  the  Atlantic  is 
carefully  restricted."  Then,  meditating  also  on  the 
admirable  sense  and  skill  with  which  the  magazine  is 
edited,  and  getting  deep  into  William  Archer's  magnifi- 
cent article  "The  Great  Stupidity"  (which  we  hope  all 
our  clients  will  read)  we  became  aware  of  outcries  of 
anguish  and  suffering  in  the  aisle  near  by. 

At  Manhattan  Transfer  a  stout  little  man  with  a 
fine  domy  forehead  and  a  derby  hat  tilted  rather  far  aft 
had  entered  the  smoker.  He  suddenly  learned  that  the 
train  did  not  stop  at  Newark.  He  uttered  lamentation, 
and  attacked  the  brakeman  with  grievous  protest.  "I 
heard  you  say,  "This  train  stops  at  Newark  and  Phila- 
delphia," he  insisted.  His  cigar  revolved  wildly  in  the 
corner  of  his  mouth;  crystal  beads  burst  out  upon  the 
opulent  curve  of  his  forehead.  "I've  got  to  meet  a  man 
in  Newark  and  sell  him  a  bill  of  goods." 

The  brakeman  was  gentle  but  firm.  "  Here's  the  con- 
ductor," he  said.  "You'll  have  to  talk  to  him." 

Now  this  is  a  tribute  of  admiration  and  respect  to 
that  conductor.  He  came  along  the  aisle  punching  tick- 
ets, holding  his  record  slip  gracefully  folded  round  the 
middle  finger  of  his  punch  hand,  as  conductors  do.  Like 
all  experienced  conductors  he  was  alert,  watchful,  ready 
for  any  kind  of  human  guile  and  stupidity,  but  cour- 
teous the  while.  The  man  bound  for  Newark  ran  to  him 
and  began  his  harangue.  The  frustrated  merchant  was 
angry  and  felt  himself  a  man  with  a  grievance.  His 
voice  rose  in  shrill  tones,  he  waved  his  hands. 

[82] 


Going  to  Philadelphia 

Then  began  a  scene  that  was  delightful  to  watch. 
The  conductor  was  magnificently  tactful.  He  ought  to 
have  been  an  ambassador  (in  fact,  he  reminded  us  of 
one  ambassador,  for  his  trim  and  slender  figure,  his 
tawny,  drooping  moustache,  the  gentle  and  serene  tact 
of  his  bearing,  were  very  like  Mr.  Henry  van  Dyke). 
He  allowed  the  protestant  to  exhaust  himself  with  re- 
proaches, and  then  he  began  an  affectionate  little  ser- 
mon, tender,  sympathetic,  but  firm. 

"I  thought  this  train  stopped  at  Newark,"  the  fat 
man  kept  on  saying. 

"You  mustn't  think,  you  must  know,"  said  the  con- 
ductor, gazing  shrewdly  at  him  above  the  rims  of  his 
demi-lune  spectacles.  "Now,  why  did  you  get  on  a 
train  without  making  sure  where  it  stopped?  You 
heard  the  brakeman  say:  *  Newark  and  Philadelphia'? 
No ;  he  said  'North  Philadelphia.'  Yes,  I  know  you  were 
in  a  hurry,  but  that  wasn't  our  fault,  was  it?  Now, 
let  me  tell  you  something:  I've  been  working  for  this 
company  for  twenty-five  years.  .  .  ." 

Unhappily  the  noise  of  the  train  prevented  us  from 
hearing  the  remark  that  followed.  We  were  remember- 
ing a  Chinese  translation  that  we  made  once.  It  went 
something  like  this : 

A  SUSPICIOUS  NATURE 

Whenever  I  travel 

I  ask  at  least  three  train-men 

If  this  is  the  right  train 

For  where  I  am  going, 

Even  then 

I  hardly  believe  them. 

[83] 


Plum  Pudding 

But  as  we  watched  the  two,  the  conductor  gently 
convincing  the  irate  passenger  that  he  would  have  to 
abide  by  his  mistake,  and  the  truculent  fat  man  grad- 
ually realizing  that  he  was  hopelessly  in  the  wrong,  a 
new  aspect  subtly  came  over  the  dialogue.  We  saw 
the  stout  man  wither  and  droop.  We  thought  he  was 
going  to  die.  His  hat  slid  farther  and  farther  upward 
on  his  dewy  brow.  His  hands  fluttered.  His  cigar, 
grievously  chewed,  trembled  in  its  corner  of  his  mouth. 
His  fine  dark  eyes  filled  with  tears. 

The  conductor,  you  see,  was  explaining  that  he  would 
have  to  pay  the  fare  to  North  Philadelphia  and  then 
take  the  first  train  back  from  there  to  Newark. 

We  feared,  for  a  few  minutes,  that  it  really  would 
be  a  case  for  a  chirurgeon,  with  cupping  and  leeching 
and  smelling  salts.  Our  rotund  friend  was  in  a  bad  way. 
His  heart,  plainly,  was  broken.  From  his  right-hand 
trouser  emerged  a  green  roll.  With  delicate  speed  and 
tact  the  conductor  hastened  this  tragic  part  of  the  per- 
formance. His  silver  punch  flashed  in  his  hand  as  he 
made  change,  issued  a  cash  slip,  and  noted  the  name  and 
address  of  the  victim,  for  some  possible  future  restitu- 
tion, we  surmised,  or  perhaps  only  as  a  generous  anaes- 
thetic. 

The  stout  man  sat  down  a  few  seats  in  front  of  us 
and  we  studied  his  back.  We  have  never  seen  a  more 
convincing  display  of  chagrin.  With  a  sombre  intro- 
spective stare  he  gazed  glassily  before  him.  We  never 
saw  any  one  show  less  enthusiasm  for  the  scenery.  The 
train  flashed  busily  along  through  the  level  green  mead- 
ows, which  blended  exactly  with  the  green  plush  of  the 

[841 


Going  to  Philadelphia 

seats,  but  our  friend  was  lost  in  a  gruesome  trance. 
Even  his  cigar  (long  since  gone  out)  was  still,  save  for 
an  occasional  quiver. 

The  conductor  came  to  our  seat,  looking,  good  man, 
faintly  stern  and  sad,  like  a  good  parent  who  has  had, 
regretfully,  to  chastise  an  erring  urchin. 

"Well,"  we  said,  "the  next  time  that  chap  gets  on  a 
train  he'll  take  care  to  find  out  where  it  stops.'* 

The  conductor  smiled,  but  a  humane,  understanding 
smile.  "I  try  to  be  fair  with  'em,"  he  said. 

"I  think  you  were  a  wonder,"  we  said. 

By  the  time  we  reached  North  Philadelphia  the 
soothing  hand  of  Time  had  exerted  some  of  its  consola- 
tion. The  stout  man  wore  a  faintly  sheepish  smile  as 
he  rose  to  escape.  The  brakeman  was  in  the  vestibule. 
He,  younger  than  the  conductor,  was  no  less  kind,  but 
we  would  hazard  that  he  is  not  quite  as  resigned  to 
mortal  error  and  distress.  He  spoke  genially,  but  there 
was  a  note  of  honest  rebuke  in  his  farewell. 

"The  next  time  you  get  on  a  train,"  he  said,  "watch 
your  stop." 


[85] 


OUR  TRICOLOUR  TIE 

WE  WENT  up  to  the  composing  room  just  now  to 
consult  our  privy  counsellor,  Peter  Augsberger, 
the  make-up  man,  and  after  Peter  had  told  us  about  his 

corn 

It  is  really  astonishing,  by  the  way,  how  many  gar- 
deners there  are  in  a  newspaper  office.  We  once  worked 
in  a  place  where  a  horticultural  magazine  and  a  beau- 
tiful journal  of  rustic  life  were  published,  and  the  de- 
lightful people  who  edited  those  magazines  were  really 
men  about  town ;  but  here  in  the  teeming  city  and  in  the 
very  node  of  urban  affairs,  to  wit,  the  composing  room, 
one  hears  nought  but  merry  gossip  about  gardens,  and 
the  great  and  good  men  by  whom  we  are  surrounded 

[861 


Our  Tricolour  Tie 

begin  their  day  by  gazing  tenderly  upon  jars  full  of  white 
iris.  And  has  not  our  friend  Charley  Sawyer  of  the 
dramatic  department  given  us  a  lot  of  vegetable  marrow 
seeds  from  his  own  garden  and  greatly  embarrassed  us 
by  so  doing,  for  he  has  put  them  in  two  packets  marked 
"Male"  and  "Female,"  and  to  tell  the  truth  we  had  no 
idea  that  the  matter  of  sex  extended  even  as  far  as  the 
apparently  placid  and  unperturbed  vegetable  marrow. 
Mr.  Sawyer  explained  carefully  to  us  just  how  the  seeds 
ought  to  be  planted,  the  males  and  females  in  properly 
wedded  couples,  we  think  he  said;  but  we  are  not  quite 
sure,  and  we  are  too  modest  to  ask  him  to  explain 
again;  but  if  we  should  make  a  mistake  in  planting 

those  seeds,  if  we  were  to Come,  we  are  getting 

away  from  our  topic.  Peter  had  told  us  about  his  corn, 
in  his  garden,  that  is,  out  in  Nutley  (and  that  reminds 
us  of  the  difficulties  of  reading  poetry  aloud.  Mr. 
Chesterton  tells  somewhere  a  story  about  a  poem  of 
Browning's  that  he  heard  read  aloud  when  he  was  a 
child,  and  understood  the  poem  to  say  "John  scorns 
ale." 

Now  Mr.  Chesterton — you  understand,  of  course,  we 
are  referring  to  Gilbert  Keith  Chesterton — being  from 
his  very  earliest  youth  an  avowed  partisan  of  malt 
liquor,  this  heresy  made  an  impression  upon  his  tender 
cortex,  and  he  never  forgot  about  John,  in  Browning's 
poem,  scorning  ale.  But  many  years  afterward,  reading 
Browning,  he  found  that  the  words  really  were:  "  John's 
corns  ail,"  meaning  apparently  that  John  was  troubled 
by  pedal  callouses.)  Peter,  we  repeat,  and  to  avoid  any 
further  misunderstanding  and  press  diligently  toward 

[87] 


Plum  Pudding 

our  theme,  having  mentioned  his  garden,  who  should 
come  up  to  us  but  Pete  Corcoran,  also  of  the  composing 
room  force,  and  a  waggish  friend  of  ours,  and  gazing 
on  us  in  a  manner  calculated  to  make  us  feel  ill  at  ease 
he  said,  "I  suppose  you  are  going  to  write  something 
about  that  tie  of  yours." 

Now  we  were  wearing  a  scarf  that  we  are  very  fond  of, 
the  kind  of  tie,  we  believe,  that  is  spoken  of  as  "regi- 
mental stripes";  at  any  rate,  it  is  designated  with  broad 
diagonal  bands  of  colour:  claret,  gold,  and  blue.  It  was 
obvious  to  us  that  Pete  Corcoran,  or,  to  give  him  his 
proper  name,  Mr.  Corcoran,  had  said  what  he  did 
merely  hi  a  humorous  way,  or  possibly  satiric,  implying 
that  we  are  generally  so  hard  up  for  something  to  write 
about  that  we  would  even  undertake  so  trifling  a  sub- 
ject as  haberdashery;  but  as  we  went  downstairs  again 
to  our  kennel,  au  dixieme,  as  Mr.  Wanamaker  would  call 
it,  we  thought  seriously  about  this  and  decided  that  we 
would  cause  Pete's  light-hearted  suggestion  to  recoil 
violently  upon  his  friendly  brow,  and  that  we  would 
write  a  little  essay  about  this  tie  and  tell  its  story, 
which,  to  be  honest,  is  very  interesting  to  us.  And  this 
essay  we  are  now  endeavouring  to  write,  even  if  it  has  to 
run  in  several  instalments. 

It  was  curious,  incidentally  (but  not  really  more 
curious  than  most  human  affairs),  that  Pete  (or  Mr. 
Corcoran)  whether  he  was  merely  chaffing  us,  or 
whether  he  was  really  curious  about  a  scarf  of  such 
wanton  colour  scheme,  should  have  mentioned  it  just 
when  he  did,  for  as  a  matter  of  fact  that  tie  had  been 
on  our  mind  all  morning.  You  see  to-day  being 

[881 


Our  Tricolour  Tie 

warm  (and  please  remember  that  what  we  call  to-day, 
is  now,  when  you  are  reading  this,  yesteHiy)  we  did 
not  wear  our  waistcoat,  or,  if  you  prefer,  o  r  vest;  but 
by  the  time  we  had  decided  not  to  wear  our  waistcoat 
we  had  already  tied  our  scarf  in  the  usual  way  we  tie 
that  particular  scarf  when  we  wear  it,  viz.,  so  as  to 
conceal  a  certain  spot  on  it  which  got  there  we  know 
not  how.  We  do  not  know  what  kind  of  a  spot  it  is; 
perhaps  it  is  a  soup  stain,  perhaps  it  is  due  to  a  shrimp 
salad  we  had  with  Endymion  at  that  amusing  place  that 
calls  itself  the  Crystal  Palace;  we  will  not  attempt  to 
trace  the  origin  of  that  swarthy  blemish  on  the  soft  silk 
of  our  tie;  but  we  have  cunningly  taught  ourself  to  knot 
the  thing  so  that  the  spot  does  not  show.  (Good,  we 
have  made  that  plain :  we  are  getting  along  famously.) 

Since  the  above  was  written  we  have  been  uptown 
and  had  lunch  with  Alf  Harcourt  and  Will  Howe  and 
other  merry  gentlemen ;  and  Will  Howe,  who  used  to  be 
a  professor  of  English  and  is  now  a  publisher,  says  we 
ought  to  break  up  our  essays  into  shorter  paragraphs. 
We  are  fain  and  teachable,  as  someone  once  said  in  a  very 
pretty  poem;  we  will  start  a  new  paragraph  right  away. 

But  when  our  tie  is  tied  in  the  manner  described 
above,  it  leaves  one  end  very  much  longer  than  the 
other.  This  is  not  noticeable  when  we  wear  our  waist- 
coat; but  having  left  off  our  waistcoat,  we  were  fearful 
that  the  manner  in  which  our  tie  was  disposed  would 
attract  attention;  and  everyone  would  suspect  just 
why  it  was  tied  in  that  way. 

And  we  did  not  have  time  to  take  it  off  and  put  on 
another  one,  because  we  had  to  catch  the  8:06. 

[89] 


Plum  Pudding 

So  when  Pete  Corcoran  spoke  about  our  tie,  was  that 
what  was  in  his  mind,  we  wondered?  Did  he  infer  the 
existence  of  that  spot,  even  though  he  did  not  see  it? 
And  did  he  therefore  look  down  upon,  or  otherwise  feel 
inclined  to  belittle  our  tie?  If  that  were  the  case,  we 
felt  that  we  really  owed  it  to  ourself  to  tell  the  story  of 
the  tie,  how  we  bought  it,  and  why;  and  just  why  that 
tie  is  to  us  not  merely  a  strip  of  rather  gaudy  neckwear, 
but  a  symbol  of  an  enchanting  experience,  a  memory 
and  token  of  an  epoch  in  our  life,  the  sign  and  expres- 
sion of  a  certain  feeling  that  can  never  come  again — 
and,  indeed  (as  the  sequel  will  show),  that  should  not 
have  come  when  it  did. 

It  was  a  bright  morning,  last  November,  in  Glovers- 
ville,  New  York,  when  we  bought  that  tie.  Now  an  ex- 
planation of  just  why  we  bought  that  tie,  and  what  we 
were  doing  in  Gloversville,  cannot  possibly  be  put  into 
a  paragraph,  at  any  rate  the  kind  of  paragraph  that 
Will  Howe  (who  used  to  be  a  professor  of  English)  would 
approve.  On  the  whole,  rather  than  rewrite  the  entire 
narrative,  tersely,  we  will  have  to  postpone  the  denoue- 
ment (of  the  story,  not  the  tie)  until  to-morrow.  This 
is  an  exhibition  of  the  difficulty  of  telling  anything 
exactly.  There  are  so  many  subsidiary  considerations 
that  beg  for  explanation.  Please  be  patient,  Pete, 
and  to-morrow  we  will  explain  that  tie  in  detail. 

II 

IT  WAS  a  bright  and  transparent  cold  morning  in 
Gloversville,  N.  Y.,  November,  1919,  and  passing  out 
of  the  Kingsborough  Hotel  we  set  off  to  have  a  look  at 

[901 


Our  Tricolour  Tie 

the  town.  And  if  we  must  be  honest,  we  were  in  pass- 
able good  humour.  To  tell  the  Truth,  as  Glovers  ville  be- 
gan its  daily  tasks  in  that  clear  lusty  air  and  in  a  white 
dazzling  sunshine,  we  believed,  simpleton  that  we  were, 
that  we  were  on  the  road  toward  making  our  fortune. 
Now,  we  will  have  to  be  brief  in  explanation  of  the  rea- 
son why  we  felt  so,  for  it  is  a  matter  not  easy  to  discuss 
with  the  requisite  delicacy.  Shortly,  we  were  on  the 
road — "trouping,"  they  call  it  in  the  odd  and  glorious 
world  of  the  theatre — with  a  little  play  in  which  we  were 
partially  incriminated,  on  a  try-out  voyage  of  one- 
night  stands.  The  night  before,  the  company  had 
played  Johnstown  (a  few  miles  from  Gloversville),  and 
if  we  do  have  to  say  it,  the  good-natured  citizens  of 
that  admirable  town  had  given  them  an  enthusiastic 
reception.  So  friendly  indeed  had  been  our  houses  on 
the  road  and  so  genially  did  the  company  manager 
smile  upon  us  that  any  secret  doubts  and  qualms  we 
had  entertained  were  now  set  at  rest.  Lo!  had  not  the 
company  manager  himself  condescended  to  share  a 
two-room  suite  with  us  in  the  Kingsborough  Hotel  that 
night?  And  we,  a  novice  in  this  large  and  exhilarating 
tract  of  life,  thought  to  ourself  that  this  was  the  ultimate 
honour  that  could  be  conferred  upon  a  lowly  co-author. 
Yes,  we  said  to  ourself,  as  we  beamed  upon  the  excellent 
town  of  Gloversville,  admiring  the  Carnegie  Library 
and  the  shops  and  the  numerous  motor  cars  and  the 
bright  shop  windows  and  munching  some  very  fine 
doughnuts  we  had  seen  in  a  bakery.  Yes,  we  repeated, 
this  is  the  beginning  of  fame  and  fortune.  Ah!  Pete 
Corcoran  may  scoff,  but  that  was  a  bright  and  golden 

[91] 


Plum  Pudding 

morning,  and  we  would  not  have  missed  it.  We  did 
not  know  then  the  prompt  and  painful  end  destined  for 
that  innocent  piece  when  it  reached  the  Alba  Via  Max- 
ima. All  we  knew  was  that  Saratoga  and  Newburgh 
and  Johnstown  had  taken  us  to  their  bosoms. 

At  this  moment,  and  our  thoughts  running  thus, 
we  happened  to  pass  by  the  window  of  a  very  alluring 
haberdasher's  shop.  In  that  window  we  saw  displayed 
a  number  of  very  brilliant  neckties,  all  rich  and  glowing 
with  bright  diagonal  stripes.  The  early  sunlight  fell 
upon  them  and  they  were  brave  to  behold.  And  we 
said  to  ourself  that  it  would  be  a  proper  thing  for  one 
who  was  connected  with  the  triumphal  onward  march 
of  a  play  that  was  knocking  them  cold  on  the  one-night 
circuit  to  flourish  a  little  and  show  some  sign  of  worldly 
vanity.  (We  were  still  young,  that  November,  and  our 
mind  was  still  subject  to  some  harmless  frailties.) 
We  entered  the  shop  and  bought  that  tie,  the  very  same 
one  that  struck  Pete  Corcoran  with  a  palsy  when  he  saw 
it  the  other  day.  We  put  it  in  our  pocket  and  walked 
back  to  the  hotel. 

Now  comes  a  portion  of  the  narrative  that  exhibits  to 
the  full  the  deceits  and  stratagems  of  the  human  being. 
This  tie,  which  we  liked  so  much,  thinking  it  the  kind 
of  thing  that  would  add  a  certain  dash  and  zip  to  our 
bearing,  was  eminently  a  metropolitan-looking  kind  of 
scarf.  No  one  would  think  to  look  at  it  that  it  had 
been  bought  in  Glovers ville.  And  we  said  to  ourself 
that  if  we  went  quietly  back  to  the  hotel  and  slipped  un- 
obtrusively into  the  washroom  and  put  on  that  tie,  no 
one  would  know  that  we  had  just  bought  it  in  Glovers- 

[92] 


Our  Tricolour  Tie 

ville,  but  would  think  it  was  a  part  of  our  elaborate 
wardrobe  that  we  had  brought  from  New  York.  Very 
well.  (We  would  not  reveal  these  shameful  subterfuges 
to  any  one  but  Pete  Corcoran.)  No  sooner  said  than 
done;  and  behold  us  taking  the  trolley  from  Glovers- 
ville  to  Fonda,  with  the  rest  of  the  company,  wearing 
that  tie  that  flared  and  burned  in  the  keen  wintry  light 
like  a  great  banner,  like  an  oriflamme  of  youthful  de- 
fiance. 

And  what  a  day  that  was!  We  shall  never  forget  it; 
we  will  never  forget  it !  Was  that  the  Mohawk  Valley 
that  glittered  in  the  morning?  (A  sunshine  so  bright 
that  sitting  on  the  sunward  side  of  the  smoker  and 
lighting  our  pipe,  the  small  flame  of  our  match  paled 
shamefully  into  a  tiny  and  scarce  visible  ghost.)  Our 
tie  strengthened  and  sustained  us  in  our  zest  for  a  world 
so  coloured  and  contoured.  We  even  thought  that  it 
was  a  bit  of  a  pity  that  our  waistcoat  was  cut  with  so 
shallow  and  conservative  a  V  that  the  casual  passerby 
would  see  but  little  of  that  triumphant  silk  beacon. 
The  fellow  members  of  our  company  were  too  polite 
to  remark  upon  it,  but  we  saw  that  they  had  noticed  it 
and  took  it  as  a  joyful  omen. 

We  had  two  and  a  half  hours  in  Albany  that  day 
and  we  remember  that  we  had  set  our  heart  on  buying  a 
certain  book.  Half  an  hour  we  allotted  to  lunch  and 
the  other  two  hours  was  spent  in  visiting  the  bookshops 
of  Albany,  which  are  many  and  good.  We  wonder  if 
any  Albany  booksellers  chance  to  recall  a  sudden  flash 
of  colour  that  came,  moved  along  the  shelves,  and  was 
gone?  We  remember  half  a  dozen  book  stores  that  we 

[93] 


Plum  Pudding 

visited;  we  remember  them  just  as  well  as  if  it  were 
yesterday,  and  we  remember  the  great  gusto  and 
bright  cheer  of  the  crowds  of  shoppers,  already  doing 
their  Christmas  pioneering.  We  remember  also  that 
three  of  the  books  we  bought  (to  give  away)  were  Mc- 
Fee's  "Aliens"  and  Frank  Adams's  "Tobogganing  on 
Parnassus,"  yes,  and  Stevenson's  "Lay  Morals."  Oh,  a 
great  day !  And  we  remember  the  ride  from  Albany  to 
Kingston,  with  the  darkening  profile  of  the  Catskills  on 
the  western  side  of  the  train,  the  tawny  colours  of  the 
fields  (like  a  lion's  hide),  the  blue  shadows  of  the  glens, 
the  sparkling  Hudson  in  quick  blinks  of  brightness,  the 
lilac  line  of  the  hills  when  we  reached  Kingston  in  the 
dusk.  We  remember  the  old  and  dilapidated  theatre 
at  Kingston,  the  big  shabby  dressing  rooms  of  the  men, 
with  the  scribbled  autographs  of  former  mummers  on 
the  walls.  And  that  night  we  said  good-bye  to  our 
little  play,  whose  very  imperfections  we  had  grown  to 
love  by  this  time,  and  took  the  3:45  A.  M.  milk  train 
to  New  York.  We  slept  on  two  seats  in  the  smoker, 
and  got  to  Weehawken  in  the  brumous  chill  of  a  winter 
dawn — still  wearing  our  tie.  Now  can  Pete  Corcoran 
wonder  why  we  are  fond  of  it,  and  why,  ever  and  anon, 
we  get  it  out  and  wear  it  in  remembrance? 


94 


THE  CLUB  OF  ABANDONED  HUSBANDS 

AJAX:  Hullo,  Socrates,  what  are  you  doing  patrolling 
the  streets  at  this  late  hour?  Surely  it  would  be  more 
seemly  to  be  at  home? 

SOCRATES:  You  speak  sooth,  Ajax,  but  I  have  no 
home  to  repair  to. 

AJAX:  What  do  you  mean  by  that? 

SOCRATES:  In  the  sense  of  a  place  of  habitation,  a 
dormitory,  of  course  I  still  have  a  home;  but  it  is 
merely  an  abandoned  shell,  a  dark  and  silent  place 
devoid  of  allure.  I  have  sent  my  family  to  the  sea- 
shore, good  Ajax,  and  the  lonely  apartment,  with  all  the 
blinds  pulled  down  and  nothing  in  the  icebox,  is  a 
dismal  haunt.  That  is  why  I  wander  upon  the  high- 
way. 

[951 


Plum  Pudding 

AJAX:  I,  too,  have  known  that  condition,  Socrates. 
Two  years  ago  Cassandra  took  the  children  to  the 
mountains  for  July  and  August;  and  upon  my  word  I 
had  a  doleful  time  of  it.  What  do  you  say,  shall  we 
have  recourse  to  a  beaker  of  ginger  ale  and  discuss 
this  matter?  It  is  still  only  the  shank  of  the  evening. 

SOCRATES:  It  is  well  thought  of. 

AJAX  :  As  I  was  saying,  the  quaint  part  of  it  was  that 
before  my  wife  left  I  had  secretly  thought  that  a  period 
of  bachelorhood  would  be  an  interesting  change.  I 
rather  liked  the  idea  of  strolling  about  in  the  evenings, 
observing  the  pageant  of  human  nature  in  my  quiet 
way,  dropping  in  at  the  club  or  the  library,  and  mingling 
with  my  fellow  men  in  a  fashion  that  the  husband  and 
father  does  not  often  have  opportunity  to  do. 

SOCRATES:  And  when  Cassandra  went  away  you 
found  yourself  desolate? 

AJAX:  Even  so.  Of  course  matters  were  rather  dif- 
ferent in  those  days,  before  the  archons  had  taken  away 
certain  stimulants,  but  the  principle  is  still  the  same. 
You  know,  the  inconsistency  of  man  is  rather  enter- 
taining. I  had  often  complained  about  having  to 
help  put  the  children  to  bed  when  I  got  home  from 
the  office.  I  grudged  the  time  it  took  to  get  them  all 
safely  bestowed.  And  then,  when  the  children  were 
away,  I  found  myself  spending  infinitely  more  time  and 
trouble  in  getting  some  of  my  bachelor  friends  to  bed. 

SOCRATES:  As  that  merry  cartoonist  Briggs  observes 
in  some  of  his  frescoes,  Oh  Man ! 

AJAX:  I  wonder  if  your  experience  is  the  same  as 
mine  was?  I  found  that  about  six  o'clock  in  the  eve- 


The  Club  of  Abandoned  Husbands 

ning,  the  hour  when  I  would  normally  have  been  hasten- 
ing home  to  wife  and  babes,  was  the  most  poignant 
time.  I  was  horribly  homesick.  If  I  did  go  back  to 
my  forlorn  apartment,  the  mere  sight  of  little  Priam's 
crib  was  enough  to  reduce  me  to  tears.  I  seriously 
thought  of  writing  a  poem  about  it. 

SOCRATES:  What  is  needed  is  a  Club  of  Abandoned 
Husbands,  for  the  consolation  of  those  whose  families 
are  out  of  town. 

AJAX  :  I  have  never  found  a  club  of  much  assistance 
at  such  a  time.  It  is  always  full  of  rather  elderly  men 
who  talk  a  great  deal  and  in  a  manner  both  doleful  and 
ill-informed. 

SOCRATES:  But  this  would  be  a  club  of  quite  a  dif- 
ferent sort.  It  would  be  devised  to  offer  a  truly  do- 
mestic atmosphere  to  those  who  have  sent  their  wives 
and  juveniles  to  the  country  for  the  benefit  of  the 
fresh  air,  and  have  to  stay  in  the  city  themselves  to 
earn  what  is  vulgarly  known  as  kale. 

AJAX:  How  would  you  work  out  the  plan? 

SOCRATES:  It  would  not  be  difficult.  In  the  first 
place,  there  would  be  a  large  nursery,  with  a  number  of 
rented  children  of  various  ages.  Each  member  of  the 
club,  hastening  thither  from  his  office  at  the  conclusion 
of  the  day's  work,  would  be  privileged  to  pick  out  some 
child  as  nearly  as  possible  similar  in  age  and  sex  to  his 
own  absent  offspring.  He  would  then  deal  with  this 
child  according  to  the  necessities  of  its  condition.  If 
it  were  an  extremely  young  infant,  a  bottle  properly 
prepared  would  be  ready  in  the  club  kitchen,  and  he 
could  administer  it.  The  club  bathroom  would  be 

[97] 


Plum  Pudding 

filled  with  hilarious  members  on  their  knees  beside  small 
tubs,  bathing  such  urchins  as  needed  it.  Others  would 
be  playing  games  on  the  floor,  or  tucking  the  children  in 
bed.  It  ought  to  be  quite  feasible  to  hire  a  number  of 
children  for  this  purpose.  During  the  day  they  would 
be  cared  for  by  a  competent  matron.  Baby  carriages 
would  be  provided,  and  if  any  of  the  club  members 
were  compelled  to  remain  in  town  over  the  week-end 
they  could  take  the  children  for  an  airing  in  the  park. 

AJAX:  This  is  a  brave  idea,  Socrates.  And  then, 
when  all  the  children  were  bedded  for  the  night,  how 
would  the  domestic  atmosphere  be  simulated? 

SOCRATES:  Nothing  simpler.  After  dinner  such 
husbands  as  are  accustomed  to  washing  the  dishes 
would  be  allowed  to  do  so  in  the  club  kitchen.  During 
the  day  it  would  be  the  function  of  the  matron  to 
think  up  a  number  of  odd  jobs  to  be  performed  in  the 
course  of  the  evening.  Pictures  would  be  hung,  clocks 
wound,  a  number  of  tin  cans  would  be  waiting  to  be 
opened  with  refractory  can  openers,  and  there  would 
always  be  several  window  blinds  that  had  gone  wrong. 
A  really  resourceful  matron  could  devise  any  number  of 
ways  of  making  the  club  seem  just  like  home.  One 
night  she  would  discern  a  smell  of  gas,  the  next  there 
might  be  a  hole  in  the  fly-screens,  or  a  little  carpenter- 
ing to  do,  or  a  caster  broken  under  the  piano.  Hus- 
bands with  a  turn  for  plumbing  would  find  the  club 
basement  a  perpetual  place  of  solace,  with  a  fresh  leak 
or  a  rumbling  pipe  every  few  days. 

AJAX  :  Admirable !  And  if  the  matron  really  wanted 
to  make  the  members  feel  at  home  she  would  take  a 

[98] 


The  Club  of  Abandoned  Husbands 

turn  through  the  building  every  now  and  then,  to  issue 
a  gentle  rebuke  for  cigar  ashes  dropped  on  the  rugs 
or  feet  elevated  on  chairs. 

SOCRATES:  The  really  crowning  touch,  I  think,  would 
lie  in  the  ice-box  raids.  A  large  ice-box  would  be  kept 
well  stocked  with  remainders  of  apple  pie,  macaroni, 
stewed  prunes,  and  chocolate  pudding.  Any  husband, 
making  a  cautious  inroad  upon  these  about  midnight, 
would  surely  have  the  authentic  emotion  of  being  in 
his  own  home. 

AJAX:  An  occasional  request  to  empty  the  ice-box 
pan  would  also  be  an  artful  echo  of  domesticity. 

SOCRATES:  Of  course  the  success  of  the  scheme 
would  depend  greatly  on  finding  the  right  person  for 
matron.  If  she  were  to  strew  a  few  hairpins  about  and 
perhaps  misplace  a  latch  key  now  and  then 

AJAX:  Socrates,  you  have  hit  upon  a  great  idea. 
But  you  ought  to  extend  the  membership  of  the  club 
to  include  young  men  not  yet  married.  Think  what  an 
admirable  training  school  for  husbands  it  would  make ! 

SOCRATES:  My  dear  fellow,  let  us  not  discuss  it  any 
further.  It  makes  me  too  homesick.  I  am  going 
back  to  my  lonely  apartment  to  write  a  letter  to  dear 
Xanthippe. 


[99 


WEST  BROADWAY 

DID  you  ever  hear  of  Finn  Square?  No?  Very 
well,  then,  we  shall  have  to  inflict  upon  you  some 
paragraphs  from  our  unpublished  work:  "A  Scenic 
Guidebook  to  the  Sixth  Avenue  L."  The  itinerary  is  a 
frugal  one:  you  do  not  have  to  take  the  L,  but  walk 
along  under  it. 

Streets  where  an  L  runs  have  a  fascination  of  their 
own.  They  have  a  shadowy  gloom,  speckled  and 
striped  with  the  sunlight  that  slips  through  the  trestles. 
West  Broadway,  which  along  most  of  its  length  is 
straddled  by  the  L,  is  a  channel  of  odd  humours.  Its 
real  name,  you  know,  is  South  Fifth  Avenue;  but  the 
Avenue  got  so  snobbish  it  insisted  on  its  humbler 
brother  changing  its  name.  Let  us  take  it  from  Spring 
Street  southward. 

[100] 


West  Broadway 

Ribbons,  purple,  red,  and  green,  were  the  first  thing 
to  catch  our  eye.  Not  the  ribbons  of  the  milliner,  how- 
ever, but  the  carbon  tapes  of  the  typewriter,  big  cans  of 
them  being  loaded  on  a  junk  wagon.  "Purple  Ribbons" 
we  have  often  thought,  would  be  a  neat  title  for  a  vol- 
ume of  verses  written  on  a  typewriter.  What  hap- 
pens to  the  used  ribbons  of  modern  poets?  Mr.  Hilaire 
Belloc,  or  Mr.  Chesterton,  for  instance.  Give  me  but 
what  these  ribbons  type  and  all  the  rest  is  merely  tripe, 
as  Edmund  Waller  might  have  said.  Near  the  ribbons 
we  saw  a  paper-box  factory,  where  a  number  of  high- 
spirited  young  women  were  busy  at  their  machines. 
A  broad  strip  of  thick  green  paint  was  laid  across  the 
lower  half  of  the  windows  so  that  these  immured  dam- 
sels might  not  waste  their  employers'  time  in  watching 
goings  on  along  the  pavement. 

Broome  and  Watts  streets  diverge  from  West 
Broadway  in  a  V.  At  the  corner  of  Watts  is  one  of 
West  Broadway's  many  saloons,  which  by  courageous 
readjustments  still  manage  to  play  their  useful  part. 
What  used  to  be  called  the  "Business  Men's  Lunch" 
now  has  a  tendency  to  name  itself  "Luncheonette"  or 
"Milk  Bar."  But  the  old  decorations  remain.  In  this 
one  you  will  see  the  electric  fixtures  wrapped  in  heavy 
lead  foil,  the  kind  of  sheeting  that  is  used  in  packages  of 
tea.  At  the  corner  of  Grand  Street  is  the  Sapphire 
Cafe,  and  what  could  be  a  more  appealing  name  than 
that?  "Delicious  Chocolate  with  Whipped  Cream," 
says  a  sign  outside  the  Sapphire.  And  some  way  far- 
ther down  (at  the  corner  of  White  Street)  is  a  jolly  old 
tavern  which  looked  so  antique  and  inviting  that  we 

[101] 


Plum  Pudding 

went  inside.  Little  tables  piled  high  with  hunks  of 
bread  betokened  the  approaching  lunch  hour.  A 
shimmering  black  cat  winked  a  drowsy  topaz  eye  from 
her  lounge  in  the  corner.  We  asked  for  cider.  There 
was  none,  but  our  gaze  fell  upon  a  bottle  marked  "Irish 
Moss."  We  asked  for  some,  and  the  barkeep  pushed 
the  bottle  forward  with  a  tiny  glass.  Irish  Moss,  it 
seems,  is  the  kind  of  drink  which  the  customer  pours  out 
for  himself,  so  we  decanted  a  generous  slug.  It  proved 
to  be  a  kind  of  essence  of  horehound,  of  notable  tartness 
and  pungency,  very  like  a  powerful  cough  syrup.  We 
wrote  it  off  on  our  ledger  as  experience.  Beside  us 
stood  a  sturdy  citizen  with  a  freight  hook  round  his 
neck,  deducing  a  foaming  crock  of  the  legitimate  per- 
centage. 

The  chief  landmark  of  that  stretch  of  West  Broad- 
way is  the  tall  spire  of  St.  Alphonsus'  Church,  near 
Canal  Street.  Up  the  steps  and  through  plain  brown 
doors  we  went  into  the  church,  which  was  cool,  quiet, 
and  empty,  save  for  a  busy  charwoman  with  humorous 
Irish  face.  Under  the  altar  canopy  wavered  a  small 
candle  spark,  and  high  overhead,  in  the  dimness,  were 
orange  and  scarlet  gleams  from  a  stained  window.  A 
crystal  chandelier  hanging  in  the  aisle  caught  pale 
yellow  tinctures  of  light.  No  Catholic  church,  wher- 
ever you  find  it,  is  long  empty;  a  man  and  a  girl  entered 
just  as  we  went  out.  At  each  side  of  the  front  steps 
the  words  Copiosa  apud  eum  redemtio  are  carved  in  the 
stone.  The  mason  must  have  forgotten  the  p  in  the 
last  word.  A  silver  plate  on  the  brick  house  next  door 
says  Redemptorist  Fathers. 

[102] 


West  Broadway 

York  Street,  running  off  to  the  west,  gives  a  glimpse 
of  the  old  Hudson  River  Railroad  freight  depot. 
St.  John's  Lane,  running  across  York  Street,  skirts  the 
ruins  of  old  St.  John's  Church,  demolished  when  the 
Seventh  Avenue  subway  was  built.  On  the  old  brown 
house  at  the  corner  some  urchin  has  chalked  the  word 
CRAZY.  Perhaps  this  is  an  indictment  of  adult 
civilization  as  a  whole.  If  one  strolls  thoughtfully 
about  some  of  these  streets — say  Thompson  Street — 
on  a  hot  day,  and  sees  the  children  struggling  to  grow 
up,  he  feels  like  going  back  to  that  word  CRAZY 
and  italicizing  it.  The  tiny  triangle  of  park  at  Beach 
Street  is  carefully  locked  up,  you  will  notice — the  only 
plot  of  grass  in  that  neighbourhood — so  that  bare  feet 
cannot  get  at  it.  Superb  irony  of  circumstance:  on 
the  near  corner  stands  the  Castoria  factory,  Castoria 
being  (if  we  remember  the  ads)  what  Mr.  Fletcher  gave 
baby  when  she  was  sick. 

Where  Varick  Street  runs  in  there  is  a  wide  triangular 
spread,  and  this,  gentle  friends,  is  Finn  Park,  named 
for  a  New  York  boy  who  was  killed  in  France.  The 
name  reminded  us  also  of  Elfin  Finn,  the  some- 
what complacent  stage  child  who  poses  for  chic  cos- 
tumes in  Vogue.  We  were  wondering  which  was  a 
more  hazardous  bringing  up  for  a  small  girl,  living  on 
Thompson  Street  or  posing  for  a  fashion  magazine. 
From  Finn  Square  there  is  a  stirring  view  of  the  Wool- 
worth  Tower.  Also  of  Claflin's  packing  cases  on  their 
way  off  to  Selma,  Ala.,  and  Kalamazoo,  Mich.,  and  to 
Nathan  Povich,  Bath,  Me.  That  conjunction  of  Finn 
and  Bath,  Me.,  suggested  to  us  that  the  empty  space 
[103] 


Plum  Pudding 

there  would  be  a  good  place  to  put  in  a  municipal 
swimming  pool  for  the  urchins  of  the  district. 

Drawn  from  the  wood,  which  legend  still  stands  on 
the  pub  at  the  corner  of  Duane  Street,  sounds  a  bit 
ominous  these  wood  alcohol  days.  John  Barleycorn 
may  be  down,  but  he's  never  out,  as  someone  has  re- 
marked. For  near  Murray  Street  you  will  find  one  of 
those  malt-and-hops  places  which  are  getting  numer- 
ous. They  contain  all  the  necessary  equipment  for — 
well,  as  the  signs  suggest,  for  making  malt  bread  and 
coffee  cake — bottle-capping  apparatus  and  rubber 
tubing  and  densimeters,  and  all  such  things  used  in 
breadmaking.  As  the  signs  say:  "Malt  syrup  for 
making  malt  bread,  coffee,  cake,  and  medicinal  pur- 
poses." 

To  conclude  the  scenic  pleasures  of  the  Sixth  Avenue 
L  route,  we  walk  through  the  cool,  dark,  low-roofed 
tunnel  of  Church  Street  in  those  interesting  blocks  just 
north  of  Vesey.  We  hark  to  the  merry  crowing  of  the 
roosters  in  the  Barclay  Street  poultry  stores;  and  we 
look  past  the  tall  gray  pillars  of  St.  Peter's  Church  at 
the  flicker  of  scarlet  and  gold  lights  near  the  altar. 
The  black-robed  nuns  one  often  sees  along  Church 
Street,  with  their  pale,  austere,  hooded  faces,  bring  a 
curious  touch  of  medievalism  into  the  roaring  tide  that 
flows  under  the  Hudson  Terminal  Building.  They 
always  walk  in  twos,  which  seems  to  indicate  an  even 
greater  apprehension  of  the  World.  And  we  always 
notice,  as  we  go  by  the  pipe  shop  at  the  corner  of  Bar- 
clay Street,  that  this  worthy  merchant  has  painted  some 
inducements  on  one  side  of  his  shop;  which  reminds  us 

[104] 


West  Broadway 

of  the  same  device  used  by  the  famous  tobacconist 
Bacon,  in  Cambridge,  England.  Why,  we  wonder, 
doesn't  our  friend  fill  the  remaining  blank  panel  on 
his  side  wall  by  painting  there  some  stanzas  from  Cal- 
verley's  "Ode  to  Tobacco?"  We  will  gladly  give  him 
the  text  to  copy  if  he  wants  it. 


[  105 


THE  RUDENESS  OF  POETS 

THE  poet  who  has  not  learned  how  to  be  rude  has 
not  learned  his  first  duty  to  himself.  By  "poet" 
I  mean,  of  course,  any  imaginative  creator — novelist, 
mathematician,  editor,  or  a  man  like  Herbert  Hoover. 
And  by  "rude"  I  mean  the  strict  and  definite  limitation 
which,  sooner  or  later,  he  must  impose  upon  his  sociable 
instincts.  He  must  refuse  to  fritter  away  priceless 
time  and  energy  in  the  random  genialities  of  the 
world.  Friendly,  well-meaning,  and  fumbling  hands 
will  stretch  out  to  bind  the  poet's  heart  in  the 
maddening  pack-thread  of  Lilliput.  It  will  always 
be  so.  Life,  for  most,  is  so  empty  of  consecrated 
purpose,  so  full  of  palaver,  that  they  cannot  un- 
derstand the  trouble  of  one  who  carries  a  flame  in 
his  heart,  and  whose  salvation  depends  on  his  strength 

F  1061 


The  Rudeness  of  Poets 

to  nourish  that  flame  unsuffocated  by  crowding  and 
scrutiny. 

The  poet  lives  in  an  alien  world.  That  is  not  his 
pride;  it  is  his  humility.  It  is  often  his  joy,  but  often 
also  his  misery:  he  must  dree  his  weird.  His  neces- 
sary solitude  of  spirit  is  not  luxury,  nor  the  gesture  of 
a  churl:  it  is  his  sacrifice,  it  is  the  condition  on  which 
he  lives.  He  must  be  content  to  seem  boorish  to  the 
general  in  order  to  be  tender  to  his  duty.  He  has 
invisible  guests  at  the  table  of  his  heart:  those  places 
are  reserved  against  all  comers.  He  must  be  their  host 
first  of  all,  or  he  is  damned.  He  serves  the  world  by 
cutting  it  when  they  meet  inopportunely.  There  are 
times  (as  Keats  said  and  Christ  implied)  when  the 
wind  and  the  stars  are  his  wife  and  children. 

There  will  be  a  thousand  pressures  to  bare  his  bosom 
to  the  lunacy  of  public  dinners,  lecture  platforms,  and 
what  not  pleasant  folderol.  He  must  be  privileged 
apparent  ruffian  discourtesy.  He  has  his  own  heart- 
burn to  consider.  One  thinks  of  Rudyard  Kipling 
in  this  connection.  Mr.  Kipling  stands  above  all  other 
men  of  letters  to-day  in  the  brave  clearness  with  which 
he  has  made  it  plain  that  he  consorts  first  of  all  with 
his  own  imagination. 

As  the  poet  sees  the  world,  and  studies,  the  more  he 
realizes  that  men  are  sharply  cut  in  two  classes:  those 
who  understand,  those  who  do  not.  With  the  latter 
he  speaks  a  foreign  language  and  with  effort,  trying 
shamefacedly  to  conceal  his  strangeness.  With  these, 
perhaps,  every  moment  spent  is  for  ever  lost.  With 
the  others  he  can  never  commune  enough,  seeking 

[107] 


Plum  Pudding 

clumsily  to  share  and  impart  those  moments  of  rare 
intuition  when  truth  came  near.  There  is  rarely  any 
doubt  as  to  this  human  division:  the  heart  knows  its 
kin. 

The  world,  as  he  sees  it  around  him,  is  almost  un- 
conscious of  its  unspeakable  loveliness  and  mystery; 
and  it  is  largely  regimented  and  organized  for  absurd- 
ity. The  greater  part  of  the  movement  he  sees  is  (by 
his  standard)  not  merely  stupid  (which  is  pardonable 
and  appealing),  but  meaningless  altogether.  He  views 
it  between  anger  and  tenderness.  Where  there  might 
have  been  the  exquisite  and  delicious  simplicity  of  a 
Japanese  print,  he  sees  the  flicker  and  cruel  garishness  of 
a  speeding  film.  And  so,  for  refreshment,  he  crosses 
through  the  invisible  doorway  into  his  own  dear  land 
of  lucidity.  He  cons  over  that  passport  of  his  un- 
sociability,  words  of  J.  B.  Yeats  which  should  be  unfor- 
gotten  in  every  poet's  mind : 

Poetry  is  the  voice  of  the  solitary  man.  The  poet  is 
always  a  solitary;  and  yet  he  speaks  to  others — he  would 
win  their  attention.  Thus  it  follows  that  every  poem  is 
a  social  act  done  by  a  solitary  man.  And  being  an 
alien  from  the  strange  land  of  the  solitary,  he  cannot 
be  expected  to  admonish  or  to  sermonize,  or  uplift,  as 
it  is  called ;  and  so  take  part  in  the  cabals  and  intrigues 
in  other  lands  of  which  he  knows  nothing,  being  him- 
self a  stranger  from  a  strange  land,  the  land  of  the  soli- 
tary. People  listen  to  him  as  they  would  to  any  other 
traveller  come  from  distant  countries,  and  all  he  asks  for 
is  courtesy  even  as  he  himself  is  courteous. 

Inferior  poets  are  those  who  forget  their  dignity — 
and,  indeed,  their  only  chance  of  being  permitted  to 

[108] 


The  Rudeness  of  Poets 

live — and  to  make  friends  try  to  enter  into  the  lives  of 
the  people  whom  they  would  propitiate,  and  so  be- 
come teachers  and  moralists  and  preachers.  And 
soon  for  penalty  of  their  rashness  and  folly  they  forget 
their  own  land  of  the  solitary,  and  its  speech  perishes 
from  their  lips.  The  traveller's  tales  are  of  all  the 
most  precious,  because  he  comes  from  a  land — the 
poet's  solitude — which  no  other  feet  have  trodden 
and  which  no  other  feet  will  tread. 

So,  briefly  and  awkwardly,  he  justifies  himself,  being 
given  (as  Mrs.  Quickly  apologized)  to  "allicholy  and 
musing."  Oh,  it  is  not  easy!  As  Gilbert  Chesterton 
said,  in  a  noble  poem : 

The  way  is  all  so  very  plain 
That  we  may  lose  the  way. 


[109] 


1100  WORDS 

THE  managing  editor,  the  city  editor,  the  produc- 
tion manager,  the  foreman  of  the  composing  room, 
and  the  leading  editorial  writer  having  all  said  to  us 
with  a  great  deal  of  sternness,  "Your  copy  for  Satur- 
day has  got  to  be  upstairs  by  such  and  such  a  time, 
because  we  are  going  to  make  up  the  page  at  so  and  so 
A.  M.,"  we  got  rather  nervous. 

If  we  may  say  so,  we  did  not  like  the  way  they  said 
it.  They  spoke — and  we  are  thinking  particularly  of 
the  production  manager — with  a  kind  of  paternal  sever- 
ity that  was  deeply  distressing  to  our  spirit.  They  are 
all,  in  off  hours,  men  of  delightfully  easy  disposition. 
They  are  men  with  whom  it  would  be  a  pleasure  and 
a  privilege  to  be  cast  away  on  a  desert  island  or  in  a 

[1101 


1100  Words 

crowded  subway  train.  It  is  only  just  to  say  that  they 
are  men  whom  we  admire  greatly.  When  we  meet 
them  in  the  elevator,  or  see  them  at  Frank's  having 
lunch,  how  full  of  jolly  intercourse  they  are.  But 
in  the  conduct  of  their  passionate  and  perilous  busi- 
ness, that  is,  of  getting  the  paper  out  on  time,  a  holy 
anguish  shines  upon  their  brows.  The  stern  daughter 
of  the  voice  of  God  has  whispered  to  them,  and 
they  pass  on  the  whisper  to  us  through  a  mega- 
phone. 

That  means  to  say  that  within  the  hour  we  have 
got  to  show  up  something  in  the  neighbourhood  of  1100 
words  to  these  magistrates  and  overseers.  With  these 
keys — typewriter  keys,  of  course — we  have  got  to  un- 
lock our  heart.  Milton,  thou  shouldst  be  living  at  this 
hour.  Speaking  of  Milton,  the  damp  that  fell  round 
his  path  (in  Wordsworth's  sonnet)  was  nothing  to  the 
damp  that  fell  round  our  alert  vestiges  as  we  hastened 
to  the  Salamis  station  in  that  drench  this  morning. 
(We  ask  you  to  observe  our  self-restraint.  We  might 
have  said  "drenching  downpour  of  silver  Long  Island 
rain,"  or  something  of  that  sort,  and  thus  got  several 
words  nearer  our  necessary  total  of  1100.  But  we 
scorn,  even  when  writing  against  time,  to  take  petty 
advantages.  Let  us  be  brief,  crisp,  packed  with 
thought.  Let  it  stand  as  drench,  while  you  admire 
our  proud  conscience.) 

Eleven  hundred  words — what  a  lot  could  be  said 
in  1100  words!  We  stood  at  the  front  door  of  the 
baggage  car  (there  is  an  odd  irony  in  this:  the  leading 
editorial  writer,  one  of  the  most  implacable  of  our 

mi] 


Plum  Pudding 

taskmasters,  is  spending  the  summer  at  Sea  Cliff, 
and  he  gets  the  last  empty  seat  left  in  the  smoker. 
So  we,  getting  on  at  Salamis,  have  to  stand  in  the  bag- 
gage car)  watching  the  engine  rock  and  roar  along  the 
rails,  while  the  rain  sheeted  the  level  green  fields.  It 
is  very  agreeable  to  ride  on  a  train  in  the  rain.  We 
have  never  known  just  why,  but  it  conduces  to  thought. 
The  clear  trickles  of  water  are  drawn  slantwise  across 
the  window  panes,  and  one  watches,  absently,  the 
curious  behaviour  of  the  drops.  They  hang  bulging 
and  pendulous,  in  one  spot  for  some  seconds.  Then, 
as  they  swell,  suddenly  they  break  loose  and  zigzag 
swiftly  down  the  pane,  following  the  slippery  pathway 
that  previous  drops  have  made.  It  is  like  a  little 
puzzle  game  where  you  manoeuvre  a  weighted  cap- 
sule among  pegs  toward  a  narrow  opening.  "Pigs  in 
clover,"  they  sometimes  call  it,  but  who  knows  why? 
The  conduct  of  raindrops  on  a  smoking-car  window  is 
capricious  and  odd,  but  we  must  pass  on.  That  topic 
alone  would  serve  for  several  hundred  words,  but  we 
will  not  be  opportunist. 

We  stood  at  the  front  door  of  the  baggage  car, 
and  in  a  pleasant  haze  of  the  faculties  we  thought 
of  a  number  of  things.  We  thought  of  some  books 
we  had  seen  up  on  East  Fifty-ninth  Street,  in  that 
admirable  row  of  old  bookshops,  particularly  Mowry 
Saben's  volume  of  essays,  "The  Spirit  of  Life," 
which  we  are  going  back  to  buy  one  of  these  days; 
so  please  let  it  alone.  We  then  got  out  a  small 
note-book  in  which  we  keep  memoranda  of  books  we 
intend  to  read  and  pored  over  it  zealously.  Just  for 
[112] 


1100  Words 

fun,  we  will  tell  you  three  of  the  titles  we  have  noted 
there: 

"The  Voyage  of  the  Hoppergrass,"  by  E.  L.  Pearson. 
"People  and  Problems,"  by  Fabian  Franklin. 
"Broken  Stowage,"  by  David  W.  Bone. 

But  most  of  all  we  thought,  in  a  vague  sentimental 
way,  about  that  pleasant  Long  Island  country  through 
which  the  engine  was  haling  and  hallooing  all  those 
carloads  of  audacious  commuters. 

Only  the  other  day  we  heard  a  wise  man  say  that 
he  did  not  care  for  Long  Island,  because  one  has 
to  travel  through  a  number  of  half -built  suburbs  before 
getting  into  real  country.  We  felt,  when  he  said  it,  that 
it  would  be  impossible  for  us  to  tell  him  how  much 
some  of  those  growing  suburbs  mean  to  us,  for  we  have 
lived  in  them.  There  is  not  one  of  those  little  frame 
dwellings  that  doesn't  give  us  a  thrill  as  we  buzz  past 
them.  If  you  voyage  from  Brooklyn,  as  we  do,  you  will 
have  noticed  two  stations  (near  Jamaica)  called  Clar- 
enceville  and  Morris  Park.  Now  we  have  never  got  off 
at  those  stations,  though  we  intend  to  some  day.  But 
in  those  rows  of  small  houses  and  in  sudden  glimpses 
of  modest  tree-lined  streets  and  corner  drug  stores  we 
can  see  something  that  we  are  not  subtle  enough  to 
express.  We  see  it  again  in  the  scrap  of  green  park 
by  the  station  at  Queens,  and  in  the  brave  little  public 
library  near  the  same  station — which  we  cannot  see 
from  the  train,  though  we  often  try  to;  but  we  know 
it  is  there,  and  probably  the  same  kindly  lady  librarian 
and  the  children  borrowing  books.  We  see  it  again — 

[113] 


Plum  Pudding 

or  we  did  the  other  day — in  a  field  at  Mineola  where  a 
number  of  small  boys  were  flying  kites  in  the  warm, 
clean,  softly  perfumed  air  of  a  July  afternoon.  We  see 
it  in  the  vivid  rows  of  colour  in  the  florist's  meadow  at 
Floral  Park.  We  don't  know  just  what  it  is,  but  over 
all  that  broad  tract  of  hardworking  suburbs  there  is  a 
secret  spirit  of  practical  and  persevering  decency  that 
we  somehow  associate  with  the  soul  of  America. 

We  see  it  with  the  eye  of  a  lover,  and  we  know  that 
it  is  good. 

Having  got  as  far  as  this,  we  took  the  trouble  to 
count  all  the  words  up  to  this  point.  The  total  is 
exactly  1100. 


[114] 


SOME  INNS 

HnHE  other  evening  we  went  with  Titan ia  to  a  ram- 
JL  shackle  country  hotel  which  calls  itself  The  Man- 
sion House,  looking  forward  to  a  fine  robust  meal.  It 
was  a  transparent,  sunny,  cool  evening,  and  when  we 
saw  on  the  bill  of  fare  half  broiled  chicken,  we  innocently 
supposed  that  the  word  half  was  an  adjective  modifying 
the  compound  noun,  broiled-chicken.  Instead,  to  our 
sorrow  and  disappointment,  it  proved  to  be  an  adverb 
modifying  broiled  (we  hope  we  parse  the  matter  cor- 
rectly). At  any  rate,  the  wretched  fowl  was  blue  and 
pallid,  a  little  smoked  on  the  exterior,  raw  and  sinewy 
within,  and  an  affront  to  the  whole  profession  of 
innkeeping.  Whereupon,  in  the  days  that  followed, 
looking  back  at  our  fine  mood  of  expectancy  as  we 
entered  that  hostelry,  and  its  pitiable  collapse  when  the 
miserable  travesty  of  victuals  was  laid  before  us,  we 
fell  to  thinking  about  some  of  the  inns  we  had  known 

U151 


Plum  Pudding 

of  old  time  where  we  had  feasted  not  without  good 
heart. 

To  speak  merely  by  sudden  memory,  for  instance, 
there  was  the  fine  old  hotel  in  Burlington,  Vermont — 
is  it  called  the  Van  Ness  House  ? — where  we  remember  a 
line  of  cane-bottomed  chairs  on  a  long  shady  veranda, 
where  one  could  look  out  and  see  the  town  simmering 
in  that  waft  of  hot  and  dazzling  sunshine  that  pours 
across  Lake  Champlain  in  the  late  afternoon:  and  The 
Black  Lion,  Lavenham,  Suffolk;  where  (unless  we  con- 
fuse it  with  a  pub  in  Bury  St.  Edmunds  where  we  had 
lunch),  there  was,  in  the  hallway,  a  very  fine  old  en- 
graving called  "Pirates  Decoying  a  Merchantman,"  in 
which  one  pirate,  dressed  in  woman's  clothes,  stood  up 
above  the  bulwarks  waving  for  assistance,  while  the 
cutlassed  ruffians  crouched  below  ready  to  do  their 
bloody  work  when  the  other  ship  came  near  enough. 
Nor  have  we  forgotten  The  Saracen's  Head,  at  Ware, 
whence  we  went  exploring  down  the  little  river  Lea  on 
Izaak  Walton's  trail;  nor  The  Swan  at  Bibury  in  Glou- 
cestershire, hard  by  that  clear  green  water  the  Colne; 
nor  another  Swan  at  Tetsworth  in  Oxfordshire,  which 
one  reaches  after  bicycling  over  the  beechy  slope  of  the 
Chilterns,  and  where,  in  the  narrow  taproom,  occurred 
the  fabled  encounter  between  a  Texas  Rhodes  Scholar 
logged  with  port  wine  and  seven  Oxfordshire  yokels  who 
made  merry  over  his  power  of  carrying  the  red  blood  of 
the  grape. 

Our  friend  C.  F.  B.,  while  we  were  meditating  these 
golden  matters,  wrote  to  us  that  he  is  going  on  a  walk- 
ing or  bicycling  trip  in  England  next  summer,  and 

[116] 


Some  Inns 

asks  for  suggestions.  We  advise  him  to  get  a  copy  of 
Hub-head's  "England"  (the  best  general  guidebook  we 
have  seen)  and  look  up  his  favourite  authors  in  the  in- 
dex. That  will  refer  him  to  the  places  associated  with 
them,  and  he  can  have  rare  sport  in  hunting  them  out. 
There  is  no  way  of  pilgrimage  so  pleasant  as  to  follow 
the  spoor  of  a  well-loved  writer.  Referring  to  our 
black  note-book,  in  which  we  keep  memoranda  of  a  mod- 
est pilgrimage  we  once  made  to  places  mentioned  by 
two  of  our  heroes,  viz.,  Boswell  and  R.  L.  S.,  we  think 
that  if  we  were  in  C.  F.  B.'s  shoes,  one  of  the  regions  we 
would  be  most  anxious  to  revisit  would  be  Dove  Dale, 
in  Derbyshire.  This  exquisite  little  valley  is  reached 
from  Ashbourne,  where  we  commend  the  Green  Man  Inn 
(visited  more  than  once  by  Doctor  Johnson  and  Bos- 
well).  This  neighbourhood  also  has  memories  of  George 
Eliot,  and  of  Izaak  Walton,  who  used  to  go  fishing  in 
the  little  river  Dove ;  his  fishing  house  is  still  there.  Un- 
fortunately, when  we  were  in  those  parts  we  did  not 
have  sense  enough  to  see  the  Manyfold,  a  curious  stream 
(a  tributary  of  the  Dove)  which  by  its  habit  of  running 
underground  caused  Johnson  and  Boswell  to  argue 
about  miracles. 

Muirhead's  book  will  give  C.  F.  B.  sound  counsel 
about  the  inns  of  that  district,  which  are  many  and 
good.  The  whole  region  of  the  Derbyshire  Peak  is 
rarely  visited  by  the  foreign  tourist.  Of  it,  Doctor 
Johnson,  with  his  sturdy  prejudice,  said:  "He  who  has 
seen  Dove  Dale  has  no  need  to  visit  the  Highlands." 
The  metropolis  of  this  moorland  is  Buxton:  unhappily 
we  did  not  make  a  note  of  the  inn  we  visited  in  that 

[117] 


Plum  Pudding 

town;  but  we  have  a  clear  recollection  of  claret,  candle- 
light, and  reading  "Weir  of  Hermiston"  in  bed;  also  a 
bathroom  with  hot  water,  not  too  common  in  the 
cheap  hostelries  we  frequented. 

We  can  only  wish  for  the  good  C.  F.  B.  as  happy  an 
evening  as  we  spent  (with  our  eccentric  friend  Mifflin 
McGill)  bicycling  from  the  Newhaven  Inn  in  a  July 
twilight.  The  Newhaven  Inn,  which  is  only  a  vile  kind 
of  meagre  roadhouse  at  a  lonely  fork  in  the  way  (where 
one  arm  of  the  signpost  carries  the  romantic  legend 
"To  Haddon  Hall"),  lies  between  Ashbourne  and 
Buxton.  But  it  is  marked  on  all  the  maps,  so  perhaps  it 
has  an  honourable  history.  The  sun  was  dying  in  red 
embers  over  the  Derbyshire  hills  as  we  pedalled  along. 
Life,  liquor,  and  literature  lay  all  before  us;  certes,  we 
had  no  thought  of  ever  writing  a  daily  column !  And 
finally,  after  our  small  lanterns  were  lit  and  cast  their 
little  fans  of  brightness  along  the  flowing  road,  we  as- 
cended a  rise  and  saw  Buxton  in  the  valley  below,  twink- 
ling with  lights — 

"And  when  even  dies,  the  million-tinted, 
And  the  night  has  come,  and  planets  glinted 
Lo,  the  valley  hollow 
Lamp-bestarred !' ' 

Nor  were  all  these  ancient  inns  (to  which  our  heart 
wistfully  returns)  on  British  soil.  There  was  the 
Hotel  de  la  Tour,  in  Montjoie,  a  quaint  small  town  some- 
where in  that  hilly  region  of  the  Ardennes  along  the 
border  between  Luxemburg  and  Belgium.  Our  mem- 

[1181 


Some  Inns 

ory  is  rather  vague  as  to  Montjoie,  for  we  got  there  late 
one  evening,  after  more  than  seventy  up-and-down 
miles  on  a  bicycle,  hypnotic  with  weariness  and  the 
smell  of  pine  trees  and  a  great  warm  wind  that  had 
buffeted  us  all  day.  But  we  have  a  dim,  comfortable 
remembrance  of  a  large  clean  bedroom,  unlighted,  in 
which  we  duskily  groped  and  found  no  less  than  three 
huge  beds  among  which  we  had  to  choose;  and  we  can 
see  also  a  dining  room  brilliantly  papered  in  scarlet,  with 
good  old  prints  on  the  walls  and  great  wooden  beams 
overhead.  Two  bottles  of  ice-cold  beer  linger  in  our 
thought :  and  there  was  some  excellent  work  done  on  a 
large  pancake,  one  of  those  durable  fleshy  German 
Pfannkuchen.  For  the  odd  part  of  it  was  (unless  our 
memory  is  wholly  amiss)  Montjoie  was  then  (1912) 
supposed  to  be  part  of  Germany,  and  they  pronounced 
it  Mon-yowey.  But  the  Reich  must  have  felt  that  this 
was  not  permanent,  for  they  had  not  Germanized  either 
the  name  of  the  town  or  of  the  hostelry. 

And  let  us  add,  in  this  affectionate  summary,  The 
Lion — (Hotel  zum  Lowen) — at  Sigmaringen,  that  de- 
licious little  haunt  on  the  upper  Danube,  where  the 
castle  sits  on  a  stony  jut  overlooking  the  river.  Alger- 
non Blackwood,  in  one  of  his  superb  tales  of  fantasy 
(in  the  volume  called  "The  Listener")  has  told  a  fasci- 
nating gruesome  story  of  the  Danube,  describing  a 
sedgy,  sandy,  desolate  region  below  the  Hungarian 
border  where  malevolent  inhuman  forces  were  apparent 
and  resented  mortal  intrusion.  But  we  cannot  test- 
ify to  anything  sinister  in  the  bright  water  of  the  Dan- 
ube in  the  flow  of  its  lovely  youth,  above  Sigmaringen. 

[119] 


Plum  Pudding 

And  if  there  were  any  evil  influences,  surely  at  Sigma- 
ringen  (the  ancient  home  and  origin  of  the  Hohenzoll- 
erns,  we  believe)  they  would  have  shown  themselves. 
In  those  exhilarating  miles  of  valley,  bicycled  in  com- 
pany with  a  blithe  vagabond  who  is  now  a  professor  at 
Cornell,  we  learned  why  the  waltz  was  called  "The  Blue 
Danube."  So  heavenly  a  tint  of  transparent  blue-green 
we  have  never  seen  elsewhere,  the  hurrying  current 
sliding  under  steep  crags  of  gray  and  yellow  stone,white- 
ened  upon  sudden  shallows  into  long  terraces  of  broken 
water.  There  was  a  wayside  chapel  with  painted  fres- 
coes and  Latin  inscriptions  (why  didn't  we  make  a  note 
of  them,  we  wonder?)  and  before  it  a  cold  gush  sluicing 
from  a  lion's  mouth  into  a  stone  basin.  A  blue  crockery 
mug  stood  on  the  rim,  and  the  bowl  was  spotted  with 
floating  petals  from  pink  and  white  rose-bushes.  We 
can  still  see  our  companion,  tilting  a  thirsty  bearded 
face  as  he  drank,  outlined  on  such  a  backdrop  of  pure 
romantic  beauty  as  only  enriches  irresponsible  youth 
in  its  commerce  with  the  world.  The  river  bends 
sharply  to  the  left  under  a  prodigious  cliff,  where  is 
some  ancient  castle  or  religious  house.  There  he  stands, 
excellent  fellow,  forever  (in  our  memory)  holding  that 
blue  mug  against  a  Maxfield  Parrish  scene. 

Just  around  that  bend,  if  you  are  discreet,  a  bathe 
can  be  accomplished,  and  you  will  reach  the  Lion  by 
supper  time,  vowing  the  Danube  the  loveliest  of  all 
streams. 

Of  the  Lion  itself,  now  that  we  compress  the  gland  of 
memory  more  closely,  we  have  little  to  report  save  a 
general  sensation  of  cheerful  comfort.  That  in  itself  is 

[  120  ] 


Some  Inns 

favourable:  the  bad  inns  are  always  accurately  tabled 
in  mind.  But  stay — here  is  a  picture  that  unexpectedly 
presents  itself.  On  that  evening  (it  was  July  15,  1912) 
there  was  a  glorious  little  girl,  about  ten  years  old,  tak- 
ing supper  at  the  Lion  with  her  parents.  Through  the 
yellow  shine  of  the  lamps  she  suddenly  reappears  to  us, 
across  the  dining  room — rather  a  more  luxurious  dining 
room  than  the  two  wayfarers  were  accustomed  to  visit. 
We  can  see  her  straight  white  frock,  her  plump  brown 
legs  in  socks  (not  reaching  the  floor  as  she  sat),  her 
tawny  golden  hair  with  a  red  ribbon.  The  two  dusty 
vagabonds  watched  her,  and  her  important-looking 
adults,  from  afar.  We  have  only  the  vaguest  im- 
pression of  her  father:  he  was  erect  and  handsome  and 
not  untouched  with  pride.  (Heavens,  were  they  some 
minor  offshoot  of  the  Hohenzollern  tribe?)  We  can  see 
the  head  waiter  smirking  near  their  table.  Across  nine 
years  and  thousands  of  miles  they  still  radiate  to  us  a 
faint  sense  of  prosperity  and  breeding;  and  the  child 
was  like  a  princess  in  a  fairy-tale.  Ah,  if  only  it  had 
all  been  a  fairy-tale.  Could  we  but  turn  back  the 
clock  to  that  summer  evening  when  the  dim  pine-alleys 
smelled  so  resinous  on  the  Muehlberg,  turn  back  the 
flow  of  that  quick  blue  river,  turn  back  history  itself  and 
rewrite  it  in  chapters  fit  for  the  clear  eyes  of  that  child 
we  saw. 

Well,  we  are  growing  grievous :  it  is  time  to  go  out  and 
have  some  cider.  There  are  many  other  admirable 
inns  we  might  soliloquize — The  Seven  Stars  in  Rotter- 
dam (Molensteeg  19,  "nabij  het  Postkantoor ") ;  Gib- 
son's Hotel,  Rutland  Square,  Edinburgh  ("Well  adapted 

[1211 


Plum  Pudding 

for  Marriages,"  says  its  card);  the  Hotel  Davenport, 
Stamford,  Connecticut,  where  so  many  palpitating 
playwrights  have  sat  nervously  waiting  for  the  opening 
performance;  the  Tannhduser  Hotel  in  Heidelberg, 
notable  for  the  affability  of  the  chambermaids.  Per- 
haps you  will  permit  us  to  close  by  quoting  a  descrip- 
tion of  an  old  Irish  tavern,  from  that  queer  book  "The 
Life  of  John  Buncle,  Esq."  (1756).  This  inn  bore  the 
curious  name  The  Conniving  House: 

The  Conniving-House  (as  the  gentlemen  of  Trinity 
called  it  in  my  time,  and  long  after)  was  a  little  public 
house,  kept  by  Jack  Macklean,  about  a  quarter  of  a  mile 
beyond  Rings-end,  on  the  top  of  the  beach,  within  a 
few  yards  of  the  sea.  Here  we  used  to  have  the  finest 
fish  at  all  times;  and  in  the  season,  green  peas,  and  all 
the  most  excellent  vegetables.  The  ale  here  was  al- 
ways extraordinary,  and  everything  the  best;  which, 
with  its  delightful  situation,  rendered  it  a  delightful 
place  of  a  summer's  evening.  Many  a  delightful  eve- 
ning have  I  passed  in  this  pretty  thatched  house 
with  the  famous  Larrey  Grogan,  who  played  on  the 
bagpipes  extreme  well;  dear  Jack  Lattin,  matchless  on 
the  fiddle,  and  the  most  agreeable  of  companions; 
that  ever  charming  young  fellow,  Jack  Wall  . 
and  many  other  delightful  fellows;  who  went  in  the 
days  of  their  youth  to  the  shades  of  eternity.  When  I 
think  of  them  and  their  evening  songs — We  will  go  to 
Johnny  Macklean's — to  try  if  his  ale  be  good  or  no,  etc., 
and  that  years  and  infirmities  begin  to  oppress  me — 
What  is  life! 

There  is  a  fine,  easy,  mellow  manner  of  writing, 
worthy    the    subject.    And    we — we    conclude    with 

[122] 


Some  Inns 

honest  regret.  Even  to  write  down  the  names  of  all 
the  inns  where  we  have  been  happy  would  be  the  pleas  • 
antest  possible  way  of  spending  an  afternoon.  But 
we  advise  you  to  be  cautious  in  adopting  our  favourites 
as  stopping  places.  Some  of  them  are  very  humble. 


[123 


THE  CLUB  IN  HOBOKEN 

THE  advertisement  ran  as  follows : 

Schooner  Hauppauge 

FOR  SALE 
By  U.  S.  Marshal, 

April  26,  1  p.  M., 
Pier  G,  Erie  R.  R., 
Weehawken,  N.  J. 

Built  at  Wilmington,  N.  C.,  1918;  net 

tonnage  1,295;  length  228;  equipped  with 

sails,  tackle,  etc. 

This  had  taken  the  eye  of  the  Three  Hours  for  Lunch 
Club.  The  club's  interest  in  nautical  matters  is  well 
known  and  it  is  always  looking  forward  to  the  day  when 
it  will  be  able  to  command  a  vessel  of  its  own.  Now  it 
would  be  too  much  to  say  that  the  club  expected  to  be 
able  to  buy  the  Hauppauge  (the  first  thing  it  would  have 
done,  in  that  case,  would  have  been  to  rename  her). 
For  it  was  in  the  slack  and  hollow  of  the  week — shall  we 

1124] 


The  Club  in  Hoboken 

say,  the  bight  of  the  week? — just  midway  between  pay- 
days. But  at  any  rate,  thought  the  club,  we  can  look 
ner  over,  which  will  be  an  adventure  in  itself ;  and  we 
can  see  just  how  people  behave  when  they  are  buying  a 
schooner,  and  how  prices  are  running,  so  that  when  the 
time  comes  we  will  be  more  experienced.  Besides,  the 
club  remembered  the  ship  auction  scene  in  "The 
Wrecker'*  and  felt  that  the  occasion  might  be  one  of 
most  romantic  excitement. 

It  is  hard,  it  is  very  hard,  to  have  to  admit  that  the 
club  was  foiled.  It  had  been  told  that  at  Cortlandt 
Street  a  ferry  bound  for  Weehawken  might  be  found; 
but  when  Endymion  and  the  Secretary  arrived  there, 
at  12:20  o'clock,  they  learned  that  the  traffic  to  Wee- 
hawken is  somewhat  sparse.  Next  boat  at  2:40,  said  a 
sign.  They  hastened  to  the  Lackawanna  ferry  at  Bar- 
clay Street,  thinking  that  by  voyaging  to  Hoboken  and 
then  taking  a  car  they  might  still  be  in  time.  But  it 
was  not  to  be.  When  the  Ithaca  docked,  just  south  of 
the  huge  red-blotched  profile  of  the  rusty  rotting 
Leviathan,  it  was  already  1  o'clock.  The  Hauppauge, 
they  said  to  themselves,  is  already  on  the  block,  and  if 
we  went  up  there  now  to  study  her,  we  would  be  regarded 
as  impostors. 

But  the  club  is  philosophic.  One  Adventure  is  very 
nearly  as  good  as  another,  and  they  trod  ashore  at 
Hoboken  with  light  hearts.  It  was  a  day  of  tender  and 
untroubled  sunshine.  They  had  a  queer  sensation  of 
being  in  foreign  lands.  Indeed,  the  tall  tragic  funnels 
of  the  Leviathan  and  her  motionless  derelict  masts  cast 
a  curious  shadow  of  feeling  over  that  region.  For  the 

H251 


Plum  Pudding 

great  ship,  though  blameless  herself,  seems  a  thing  of 
shame,  a  remembrance  of  days  and  deeds  that  soiled 
the  simple  creed  of  the  sea.  Her  great  shape  and  her 
majestic  hull,  pitiably  dingy  and  stark,  are  yet  plainly 
conscious  of  sin.  You  see  it  in  every  line  of  her  as  she 
lies  there,  with  the  attitude  of  a  great  dog  beaten  and 
crouching.  You  wonder  how  she  would  behave  if  she 
were  towed  out  on  the  open  bright  water  of  the  river, 
under  that  clear  sky,  under  the  eyes  of  other  ships  going 
about  their  affairs  with  the  self-conscious  rectitude  and 
pride  that  ships  have.  For  ships  are  creatures  of  in- 
tense caste  and  self-conscious  righteousness.  They 
rarely  forgive  a  fallen  sister — even  when  she  has  fallen 
through  no  fault  of  her  own.  Observe  the  Nieuw  Am- 
sterdam as  she  lies,  very  solid  and  spick,  a  few  piers 
above.  Her  funnel  is  gay  with  bright  green  stripes; 
her  glazed  promenade  deck  is  white  and  immaculate. 
But,  is  there  not  just  a  faint  suggestion  of  smug- 
ness in  her  mien?  She  seems  thanking  the  good  old 
Dutch  Deity  of  cleanliness  and  respectability  that  she 
herself  is  not  like  this  poor  trolloping  giantess,  degraded 
from  the  embrace  of  ocean  and  the  unblemished  circle 
of  the  sea. 

That  section  of  Hoboken  waterfront,  along  toward 
the  green  promontory  crowned  by  Stevens  Institute, 
still  has  a  war-time  flavour.  The  old  Hamburg- Amer- 
ican line  piers  are  used  by  the  Army  Transport  Service, 
and  in  the  sunshine  a  number  of  soldiers,  off  duty,  were 
happily  drowsing  on  a  row  of  two-tiered  beds  set  out- 
doors in  the  April  pleasantness.  There  was  a  racket  of 
bugles,  and  a  squad  seemed  to  be  drilling  in  the  court- 

[126] 


The  Club  in  Hoboken 

yard.  Endymion  and  the  Secretary,  after  sitting  on  a 
pier-end  watching  some  barges,  and  airing  their  nautical 
views  in  a  way  they  would  never  have  done  had  any 
pukka  seafaring  men  been  along,  were  stricken  with  the 
very  crisis  of  spring  fever  and  lassitude.  They  con- 
sidered the  possibility  of  hiring  one  of  the  soldiers'  two- 
tiered  beds  for  the  afternoon.  Perhaps  it  is  the  first  two 
syllables  of  Hoboken's  name  that  make  it  so  desper- 
ately debilitating  to  the  wayfarer  in  an  April  noonshine. 
Perhaps  it  was  a  kind  of  old  nostalgia,  for  the  Secre- 
tary remembered  that  sailormen's  street  as  it  had  been 
some  years  ago,  when  he  had  been  along  there  in  search 
of  schooners  of  another  sort. 

But  anatomizing  their  anguish,  these  creatures  fi- 
nally decided  that  it  might  not  be  spring  fever, 
but  merely  hunger.  They  saw  the  statue  of  the  late 
Mr.  Sloan  of  the  Lackawanna  Railroad — Sam  Sloan, 
the  bronze  calls  him,  with  friendly  familiarity.  The 
aspiring  forelock  of  that  statue,  and  the  upraised  finger 
of  Samuel  Sullivan  Cox  ("The  Letter  Carriers'  Friend") 
in  Astor  Place,  the  club  considers  two  of  the  most  strik- 
ing things  in  New  York  statuary.  Mr.  Pappanicholas, 
who  has  a.  candy  shop  in  the  high-spirited  building 
called  Duke's  House,  near  the  ferry  terminal,  must  be 
(Endymion  thought)  some  relative  of  Santa  Claus. 
Perhaps  he  is  Santa  Claus,  and  the  club  pondered  on 
the  quite  new  idea  that  Santa  Claus  has  lived  in  Hobo- 
ken  all  these  years  and  no  one  had  guessed  it.  The 
club  asked  a  friendly  policeman  if  there  were  a  second- 
hand bookstore  anywhere  near.  "Not  that  I  know 
of,"  he  said.  But  they  did  find  a  stationery  store  where 

f  1271 


Plum  Pudding 

there  were  a  number  of  popular  reprints  in  the  window, 
notably  "The  Innocence  of  Father  Brown,"  and 
Andrew  Lang's  "My  Own  Fairy  Book." 

But  lunch  was  still  to  be  considered.  The  club  is 
happy  to  add  The  American  Hotel,  Hoboken,  to  its 
private  list  of  places  where  it  has  been  serenely  happy. 
Consider  corned  beef  hash,  with  fried  egg,  excellent, 
for  25  cents.  Consider  rhubarb  pie,  quite  adequate, 
for  10  cents.  Consider  the  courteous  and  urbane 
waiter.  In  one  corner  of  the  dining  room  was  the  hotel 
office,  with  a  large  array  of  push  buttons  communicating 
with  the  bedrooms.  The  club,  its  imagination  busy, 
conceived  that  these  were  for  the  purpose  of  awakening 
seafaring  guests  early  in  the  morning,  so  as  not  to  miss 
their  ship.  If  we  were,  for  instance,  second  mate  of  the 
Hauppauge,  and  came  to  port  in  Hoboken,  The  Amer- 
ican Hotel  would  be  just  the  place  where  we  would  want 
to  put  up. 

That  brings  us  back  to  the  Hauppauge.  We  wonder 
who  bought  her,  and  how  much  he  paid;  and  why  she 
carries  the  odd  name  of  that  Long  Island  village?  If 
he  would  only  invite  us  over  to  see  her — and  tell  us  how 
to  get  there! 


128] 


THE  CLUB  AT  ITS  WORST 

A  BARBECUE  and  burgoo  of  the  Three  Hours  for 
Lunch  Club  was  held,  the  club's  medical  adviser 
acting  as  burgoomaster  and  Mr.  Lawton  Mackall,  the 
managing  director,  as  jest  of  honour.  The  news  that 
Lawton  was  at  large  spread  rapidly  through  the  city, 
and  the  club  was  trailed  for  some  distance  by  an  in- 
furiated agent  of  the  Society  for  the  Deracination  of 
Puns.  But  Lawton  managed  to  kick  over  his  traces, 
and  the  club  safely  gained  the  quiet  haven  of  a  Cedar 
Street  chophouse.  Here,  when  the  members  were  duly 
squeezed  into  a  stall,  the  Doctor  gazed  cheerfully  upon 
Endymion  and  the  Secretary  who  held  the  inward 
places.  "Now  is  my  chance,"  he  cried,  "to  kill  two 
bards  with  one  stone." 

Lawton,  says  the  stenographic  report,  was  in  excel- 

[129] 


Plum  Pudding 

lent  form,  and  committed  a  good  deal  of  unforgivable 
syntax.  He  was  somewhat  apprehensive  when  he  saw 
the  bill  of  fare  inscribed  "Ye  Olde  Chop  House,"  for 
he  asserts  that  the  use  of  the  word  "Ye"  always  in- 
volves extra  overhead  expense — and  a  quotation  from 
Shakespeare  on  the  back  of  the  menu,  he  doubted, 
might  mean  a  convert  charge.  But  he  was  distinctly 
cheered  when  the  kidneys  and  bacon  arrived — a  long 
strip  of  bacon  gloriously  balanced  on  four  very  spherical 
and  well-lubricated  kidneys.  Smiling  demurely,  even 
blandly,  Lawton  rolled  his  sheave  of  bacon  to  and  fro 
upon  its  kidneys.  "This  is  the  first  time  I  ever  saw 
bacon  with  ball  bearings,"  he  ejaculated.  He  gazed 
with  the  eye  of  a  connoisseur  upon  the  rather  candid 
works  of  art  hanging  over  the  club's  corner.  He  said 
they  reminded  him  of  Mr.  Coles  Phillips's  calf-tones. 
The  Doctor  was  speaking  of  having  read  an  interesting 
dispatch  by  Mr.  Grasty  in  the  Times.  "I  understand," 
said  Lawton,  "that  he  is  going  to  collect  some  of  his 
articles  in  a  book,  to  be  called  'Leaves  of  Grasty'." 
Duly  ambered  with  strict  and  cloudy  cider,  the  meal 
progressed,  served  with  humorous  comments  by  the 
waitress  whom  the  club  calls  the  Venus  of  Mealo.  The 
motto  of  the  club  is  Tres  Horas  Non  Numero  Nisi  Se- 
renas, and  as  the  afternoon  was  still  juvenile  the  gather- 
ing was  transferred  to  the  waterfront.  Passing  onto 
the  pier,  Lawton  gazed  about  him  with  admirable 
naivete.  Among  the  piles  of  freight  were  some  agri- 
cultural machines.  "Ha,"  cried  the  managing  director, 
"this,  evidently,  is  where  the  Piers  Plowman  works!" 
The  club's  private  yacht,  white  and  lovely,  lay  at  her 

[130] 


The  Club  at  Its  Worst 

berth,  and  in  the  Doctor's  cabin  the  members  pro- 
ceeded to  the  serious  discussion  of  literature.  Lawton, 
however,  seemed  nervous.  Cargo  was  being  put 
aboard  the  ship,  and  ever  and  anon  there  rose  a  loud 
rumbling  of  donkey  engines.  The  occasional  hurrying 
roar  of  machinery  seemed  to  make  Lawton  nervous,  for 
he  said  apprehensively  that  he  feared  someone  was 
rushing  the  growler.  In  the  corridor  outside  the 
Doctor's  quarters  a  group  of  stewardesses  were  violently 
altercating,  and  Lawton  remarked  that  a  wench  can 
make  almost  as  much  noise  as  a  winch.  On  the  whole, 
however,  he  admired  the  ship  greatly,  and  was  taken 
with  the  club's  plans  for  going  cruising.  He  said 
he  felt  safer  after  noting  that  the  lifeboats  were  guar- 
anteed to  hold  forty  persons  with  cubic  feet. 

By  this  time,  all  sense  of  verbal  restraint  had  been 
lost,  and  the  club  (if  we  must  be  candid)  concluded 
its  session  by  chanting,  not  without  enjoyment,  its  own 
sea  chantey,  which  runs  as  follows: — 

I  shipped  aboard  a  galleass 

In  a  brig  whereof  men  brag, 
But  lying  on  my  palliass 

My  spirits  began  to  sag. 

I  heard  the  starboard  steward 

Singing  abaft  the  poop; 
He  lewdly  sang  to  looard 

And  sleep  fled  from  the  sloop. 

"The  grog  slops  over  the  fiddles 

With  the  violins  of  the  gale: 
Two  bitts  are  on  the  quarterdeck, 

The  seamen  grouse  and  quail. 

[131] 


Plum  Pudding 

"The  anchor  has  been  catted, 

The  timid  ratlines  flee, 
Careening  and  carousing 

She  yaws  upon  the  sea. 

"The  skipper  lies  in  the  scupper, 
The  barque  is  lost  in  the  bight; 

The  bosun  calls  for  a  basin — 
This  is  a  terrible  night. 

"The  wenches  man  the  winches, 
The  donkey  men  all  bray — " 
...    I  hankered  to  be  anchored 
In  safety  in  the  bay ! 


[132 


A  SUBURBAN  SENTIMENTALIST 

r  I  lHAT  wild  and  engaging  region  known  as  the  Sa- 
-I-  lamis  Estates  has  surprising  enchantments  for  the 
wanderer.  Strolling  bushrangers,  if  they  escape  being 
pelleted  with  lead  by  the  enthusiastic  rabbit  hunters 
who  bang  suddenly  among  thickets,  will  find  many 
vistas  of  loveliness.  All  summer  long  we  are  imprisoned 
in  foliage,  locked  up  in  a  leafy  embrace.  But  when  the 
leaves  have  shredded  away  and  the  solid  barriers  of 
green  stand  revealed  as  only  thin  fringes  of  easily 
penetrable  woodland,  the  eye  moves  with  surprise  over 
these  wide  reaches  of  colour  and  freedom.  Beyond  the 
old  ruined  farmhouse  past  the  gnarled  and  rheumatic 
apple  tree  is  that  dimpled  path  that  runs  across  fields, 
the  short  cut  down  to  the  harbour.  The  stiff  frozen 
plumes  of  ghostly  goldenrod  stand  up  pale  and  powdery 
along  the  way.  How  many  tints  of  brown  and  fawn 
and  buff  in  the  withered  grasses — some  as  feathery 
and  translucent  as  a  gauze  scarf,  as  nebulous  as  those 
veilings  Robin  Herrick  was  so  fond  of — his  mention 
of  them  gives  an  odd  connotation  to  a  modern  reader — 

[133] 


Plum  Pudding 

So  looks  Anthea,  when  in  bed  she  lyes, 
Orecome,  or  halfe  betray'd  by  Tiffanies. 

Our  fields  now  have  the  rich,  tawny  colour  of  a  panther's 
hide.  Along  the  little  path  are  scattered  sumac  leaves, 
dark  scarlet.  It  is  as  though  Summer  had  been 
wounded  by  the  hunter  Jack  Frost,  and  had  crept  away 
down  that  secret  track,  leaving  a  trail  of  bloodstains  be- 
hind her. 

This  tract  of  placid  and  enchanted  woodland,  field, 
brake,  glen,  and  coppice,  has  always  seemed  to  us  so 
amazingly  like  the  magical  Forest  of  Arden  that  we  be- 
lieve Shakespeare  must  have  written  "As  You  Like  It" 
somewhere  near  here.  One  visitor,  who  was  here  when 
the  woods  were  whispering  blackly  in  autumn  moon- 
light, thought  them  akin  to  George  Meredith's  "The 
Woods  of  Westermain" — 

Enter  these  enchanted  woods, 

You  who  dare. 

Nothing  harms  beneath  the  leaves 
More  than  waves  a  swimmer  cleaves. 
Toss  your  heart  up  with  the  lark, 
Foot  at  peace  with  mouse  and  worm. 

Fair  you  fare. 
Only  at  a  dread  of  dark 
Quaver,  and  they  quit  their  form: 
Thousand  eyeballs  under  hoods 

Have  you  by  the  hair. 
Enter  these  enchanted  woods, 

You  who  dare. 

But  in  winter,  and  in  such  a  noonday  of  clear  sunshine 
as  the  present,  when  all  the  naked  grace  of  trunks  and 
[134] 


A  Suburban  Sentimentalist 

hillsides  lies  open  to  eyeshot,  the  woodland  has  less  of 
that  secrecy  and  brooding  horror  that  Meredith  found 
in  "Westermain."  It  has  the  very  breath  of  that 
golden-bathed  magic  that  moved  in  Shakespeare's  ten- 
derest  haunt  of  comedy.  Momently,  looking  out 
toward  the  gray  ruin  on  the  hill  (which  was  once,  most 
likely,  the  very  "sheepcote  fenced  about  with  olive  trees" 
where  Aliena  dwelt  and  Ganymede  found  hose  and 
doublet  give  such  pleasing  freedom  to  her  limbs  and  her 
wit)  one  expects  to  hear  the  merry  note  of  a  horn;  the 
moralizing  Duke  would  come  striding  thoughtfully 
through  the  thicket  down  by  the  tiny  pool  (or  shall  we 
call  it  a  mere?).  He  would  sit  under  those  two  knotty 
old  oaks  and  begin  to  pluck  the  burrs  from  his  jerkin. 
Then  would  come  his  cheerful  tanned  followers,  carry- 
ing the  dappled  burgher  they  had  ambushed;  and,  last, 
the  pensive  Jacques  (so  very  like  Mr.  Joseph  Pennell  in 
bearing  and  humour)  distilling  his  meridian  melancholy 
into  pentameter  paragraphs,  like  any  colyumist.  A 
bonfire  is  quickly  kindled,  and  the  hiss  and  fume  of  ven- 
ison collops  whiff  to  us  across  the  blue  air.  Against 
that  stump — is  it  a  real  stump,  or  only  a  painted  canvas 
affair  from  the  property  man's  warehouse? — surely  that 
is  a  demijohn  of  cider?  And  we  can  hear,  presently, 
that  most  piercingly  tremulous  of  all  songs  rising  in  rich 
chorus,  with  the  plenitude  of  pathos  that  masculines 
best  compass  after  a  full  meal — 

Blow,  blow,  thou  winter  wind, 
Thou  art  not  so  unkind 
As  man's  ingratitude — 

[135] 


Plum  Pudding 

We  hum  the  air  over  to  ourself ,  and  are  stricken  with 
the  most  perfect  iridescent  sorrow.  We  even  ransack 
our  memory  to  try  to  think  of  someone  who  has  been 
ungrateful  to  us,  so  that  we  can  throw  a  little  vigorous 
bitterness  into  our  tone. 

Yes,  the  sunshine  that  gilds  our  Salamis  thickets 
seems  to  us  to  have  very  much  the  amber  glow  of  foot- 
lights. 

In  another  part  of  this  our  "forest" — it  is  so  truly  a 
forest  in  the  Shakespearean  sense,  as  all  Long  Island 
forests  are  (e.  g.,  Forest  Hills),  where  even  the  lioness 
and  the  green  and  gilded  snake  have  their  suburban  ana- 
logues, which  we  will  not  be  laborious  to  explain — we 
see  Time  standing  still  while  Ganymede  and  Aliena  are 
out  foraging  with  the  burly  Touchstone  (so  very  like 
that  well-loved  sage  Mr.  Don  Marquis,  we  protest!). 
And,  to  consider,  what  a  place  for  a  colyumist  was  the 
Forest  of  Arden.  See  how  zealous  contributors  hung 
their  poems  round  on  trees  so  that  he  could  not  miss 
them.  Is  it  not  all  the  very  core  and  heartbeat  of  what 
we  call  "romance,"  that  endearing  convention  that  sub- 
mits the  harsh  realities  and  interruptions  of  life  to  a 
golden  purge  of  fancy?  How,  we  sometimes  wonder, 
can  any  one  grow  old  as  long  as  he  can  still  read  "As 
You  Like  It,"  and  feel  the  magic  of  that  best-loved  and 
most  magical  of  stage  directions — The  Forest  of  Arden. 

And  now,  while  we  are  still  in  the  soft  Shakespearean 
mood,  comes  "Twelfth  Night" — traditionally  devoted  to 
dismantling  the  Christmas  Tree;  and  indeed  there  is  no 
task  so  replete  with  luxurious  and  gentle  melancholy. 
For  by  that  time  the  toys  which  erst  were  so  splendid 

[136] 


A  Suburban  Sentimentalist 

are  battered  and  bashed;  the  cornucopias  empty  of  candy 
(save  one  or  two  striped  sticky  shards  of  peppermint 
which  elude  the  thrusting  index,  and  will  be  found 
again  next  December);  the  dining-room  floor  is  thick 
with  fallen  needles;  the  gay  little  candles  are  burnt  down 
to  a  small  gutter  of  wax  in  the  tin  holders.  The  floor 
sparkles  here  and  there  with  the  fragments  of  tinsel 
balls  or  popcorn  chains  that  were  injudiciously  hung 
within  leap  of  puppy  or  grasp  of  urchin.  And  so  you  see 
him,  the  diligent  parent,  brooding  with  a  tender  mourn- 
f ulness  and  sniffing  the  faint  whiff  of  that  fine  Christmas 
tree  odour — balsam  and  burning  candles  and  fist-warmed 
peppermint — as  he  undresses  the  prickly  boughs.  Here 
they  go  into  the  boxes,  red,  green,  and  golden  balls, 
tinkling  glass  bells,  stars,  paper  angels,  cotton-wool 
Santa  Glaus,  blue  birds,  celluloid  goldfish,  mosquito 
netting,  counterfeit  stockings,  nickel-plated  horns,  and 
all  the  comical  accumulation  of  oddities  that  gathers 
from  year  to  year  in  the  box  labelled  CHRISTMAS  TREE 
THINGS,  FRAGILE.  The  box  goes  up  to  the  attic,  and  the 
parent  blows  a  faint  diminuendo,  achingly  prolonged, 
on  a  toy  horn.  Titania  is  almost  reduced  to  tears  as  he 
explains  it  is  the  halloo  of  Santa  Glaus  fading  away  into 
the  distance. 


137] 


GISSING 

OUR  subject,  for  the  moment,  is  Gissing — and  when 
we  say  Gissing  we  mean  not  the  author  of  that 
name,  but  the  dog.  He  was  called  Gissing  because  he 
arrived,  in  the  furnace  man's  poke,  on  the  same  day  on 
which,  after  long  desideration,  we  were  united  in  holy 
booklock  with  a  copy  of  "By  the  Ionian  Sea." 

Gissing  needs  (as  the  man  said  who  wrote  the  preface 
to  Sir  Kenelm  Digby's  Closet)  no  Rhetoricating  Flos- 
cules  to  set  him  off.  He  is  (as  the  man  said  who  wrote 
a  poem  about  New  York)  vulgar  of  manner,  underbred. 
He  is  young :  his  behaviour  lacks  restraint.  Yet  there  is 
in  him  some  lively  prescription  of  that  innocent  and  in- 
divisible virtue  that  Nature  omitted  from  men  and  gave 
only  to  Dogs.  This  is  something  that  has  been  the 
cause  of  much  vile  verse  in  bad  poets,  of  such  gruesome 
twaddle  as  Senator  Vest's  dreadful  outbark.  But  it  is 
a  true  thing. 

How  absurd,  we  will  interject,  is  the  saying:  "Love  me, 
love  my  dog."  If  he  really  is  my  dog,  he  won't  let  you 

1138] 


Gissing 

love  him.  Again,  one  man's  dog  is  another  man's  mon- 
grel. Mr.  Robert  Cortes  Holliday,  that  quaint  phi- 
losopher frequently  doggishly  nicknamed  Owd  Bob, 
went  to  Washington  lately  to  see  President  Harding. 
His  eye  fell  upon  the  White  House  Airedale.  Now  Owd 
Bob  is  himself  something  of  an  Airedale  trifler,  and 
cherishes  the  memory  of  a  certain  Tristram  Shandy,  an 
animal  that  frequently  appeared  in  the  lighter  edito- 
rials of  the  Bookman  when  Mr.  Holliday  (then  the 
editor)  could  think  of  nothing  else  to  write  about.  And 
of  Mr.  Harding's  dog  Mr.  Holliday  reports,  with  grave 
sorrow:  "I  don't  think  he  is  a  good  Airedale.  He  has 
too  much  black  on  him.  Now  Shandy  had  only  a  small 
saddle  of  black.  .  .  ." 

But  such  are  matters  concerning  only  students  of 
full-bred  dogs,  of  whom  we  are  not  who. 

As  to  Gissing:  we  were  trying  to  think,  while  writing 
the  preceding  excursion,  how  to  give  you  his  colour. 
Yellow  is  a  word  too  violent,  too  vulgarly  connotative. 
Brown  is  a  muddy  word.  Sandy  is  too  pale.  Gamboge 
is  a  word  used  by  artists,  who  are  often  immoral  and 
excitable.  Shall  we  say,  the  colour  of  a  corncob  pipe, 
singed  and  tawnied  by  much  smoking?  Or  a  pigskin 
tobacco  pouch  while  it  is  still  rather  new?  Or  the  colour 
of  the  Atlantic  Monthly  in  the  old  days,  when  it  lay 
longer  on  the  stands  than  it  does  now,  and  got  faintly 
bleached?  And  in  this  colour,  whatever  it  is,  you  must 
discern  a  dimly  ruddy  tinge.  On  his  forehead,  which  is 
not  really  a  forehead,  but  a  continuation  of  a  long  and 
very  vulpine  nose,  there  is  a  small  white  stripe.  It  runs 
upward  from  between  his  eyes,  but  cants  slightly  to  one 

[139] 


Plum  Pudding 

side  (like  a  great  many  journalists).  There  is  a  small 
white  patch  on  his  chin.  There  is  a  white  waistcoat  on 
his  chest,  or  bosom  if  you  consider  that  a  more  affection- 
ate word.  White  also  are  the  last  twelve  bristles  (we 
have  counted  them)  on  his  tail  (which  is  much  too  long). 
His  front  ankles  bend  inward  rather  lopsidedly,  as  though 
he  had  fallen  downstairs  when  very  young.  When  we 
stoke  the  furnace,  he  extends  his  forward  legs  on  the 
floor  (standing  erect  the  while  in  his  rearward  edifice) 
and  lays  his  head  sideways  on  his  paws,  and  considers  us 
in  a  manner  not  devoid  of  humour. 

Not  far  from  our  house,  in  that  desirable  but  not 
very  residential  region  which  we  have  erst  described 
as  the  Forest  of  Arden,  there  is  a  pond.  It  is  a  very  ro- 
mantic spot,  it  is  not  unlike  the  pond  by  which  a  man 
smoking  a  Trichinopoly  cigar  was  murdered  in  one  of 
the  Sherlock  Holmes  stories.  (The  Boscombe  Valley 
Mystery!)  It  is  a  shallow  little  pond,  but  the  water  is 
very  clear;  last  winter  when  it  was  frozen  it  always  re- 
minded us  of  the  cheerful  advertising  of  one  of  the  ice 
companies,  it  was  so  delightfully  transparent.  This 
pond  is  a  kind  of  Union  League  Club  for  the  frogs  at 
this  time  of  year;  all  night  long  you  can  hear  them  re- 
clining in  their  armchairs  of  congenial  mud  and  uttering 
their  opinions,  which  vary  very  little  from  generation  to 
generation.  Most  of  those  frogs  are  Republicans,  we 
feel  sure,  but  we  love  them  no  less. 

In  this  pond  Gissing  had  his  first  swim  one  warm 
Sunday  recently.  The  party  set  out  soon  after  break- 
fast. Gissing  was  in  the  van,  his  topaz  eyes  wild  with 
.ambition.  Followed  a  little  red  express-wagon,  in 

[140] 


Gissing 

which  sat  the  Urchiness,  wearing  her  best  furry  hat 
which  has,  in  front,  a  small  imitation  mouse-head  with 
glass  eyes.  The  Urchin,  wearing  a  small  Scotch  bonnet 
with  ribbons,  assisted  in  hauling  the  wagon.  Gissing 
had  not  yet  been  tested  in  the  matter  of  swimming: 
this  was  a  sober  moment.  Would  he  take  gladly  to  the 
ocean?  (So  the  Urchin  innocently  calls  our  small  sheet 
of  water,  having  by  a  harmless  ratiocination  concluded 
that  this  term  applies  to  any  body  of  water  not  sur- 
rounded by  domestic  porcelain.) 

Now  Gissing  is  passionate  in  the  matter  of  chasing 
sticks  hurled  abroad.  On  seeing  a  billet  seized  and  held 
aloft  with  that  sibilant  sound  which  stirs  his  ingenuous 
spirit  to  prodigies  of  pursuit,  his  eyes  were  flame,  his 
heart  was  apoplexy.  The  stick  flew  aloft  and  curved 
into  the  pond,  and  he  rushed  to  the  water's  edge.  But 
there,  like  the  recreant  knight  in  the  Arthurian  idyl,  he 
paused  and  doubted.  There  was  Excalibur,  floating 
ten  feet  from  shore.  This  was  a  new  experience.  Was 
it  written  that  sticks  should  be  pursued  in  this  strange 
and  alien  element?  He  barked  querulously,  and  re- 
turned, his  intellect  clouded  with  hesitation.  What 
was  this  etiquette?  He  was  embarrassed. 

Another  stick  was  flung  into  the  trembling  mere. 
This  time  there  was  no  question.  When  the  gods  give 
the  same  sign  twice,  the  only  answer  is  obey.  A  tawny 
streak  crossed  the  small  meadow,  and  leaped  unques- 
tioningly  into  the  pond.  There  was  a  plunging  and 
a  spattery  scuffle,  and  borne  up  by  a  million  years  of 
heredity  he  pursued  the  floating  enemy.  It  was  seized, 
and  a  large  gulp  of  water  also,  but  backward  he  came 

[1411 


Plum  Pudding 

bearing  it  merrily.  Then,  also  unknowing  that  he  was 
fulfilling  old  tradition,  he  came  as  near  as  possible  to 
the  little  group  of  presbyters  and  dehydrated  himself 
upon  them.  Thus  was  a  new  experience  added  to  this 
young  creature.  The  frogs  grew  more  and  more  pen- 
sive as  he  spent  the  rest  of  the  morning  churning  the 
pond  hither  and  thither. 

That  will  be  all  about  Gissing  for  the  present. 


142] 


A  DIALOGUE 

IT  WAS  our  good  fortune  to  overhear  a  dialogue  be- 
tween Gissing  (our  dog)  and  Mike,  the  dog  who  lives 
next  door.  Mike,  or  Crowgill  Mike  II,  to  give  him  his 
full  entitles,  is  a  very  sagacious  old  person,  in  the  fif- 
teenth year  of  his  disillusionment,  and  of  excellent  fam- 
ily. If  our  humble  Gissing  is  to  have  a  three-barrelled 
name,  it  can  only  be  Haphazard  Gissing  I,  for  his  an- 
cestry is  plainly  miscellaneous  and  impromptu.  He  is, 
we  like  to  say,  a  synthetic  dog.  He  is  young:  six 
months;  we  fear  that  some  of  the  errors  now  fre- 
quently urged  against  the  rising  generation  are  plainly 
discernible  in  him.  And  Mike,  who  is  grizzled  and 
grown  somewhat  dour,  shows  toward  our  Gissing  much 
the  attitude  of  Dr.  Eliot  toward  the  younger  litter  of 
humans. 

In  public,  and  when  any  one  is  watching,  Mike,  who 
is  the  Dog  Emeritus  of  the  Salamis  Estates,  pays  no 
heed  to  Gissing  at  all :  ignores  him,  and  prowls  austerely 
about  his  elderly  business.  But  secretly  spying  from  a 
window,  we  have  seen  him,  unaware  of  notice,  stroll 

[143] 


Plum  Pudding 

(a  little  heavily  and  stiffly,  for  an  old  dog's  legs  grow 
gouty)  over  to  Gissing's  kennel.  With  his  tail  slightly 
vibrant,  he  conducts  a  dignified  causerie.  Unhappily, 
these  talks  are  always  concluded  by  some  breach  of 
manners  on  Gissing's  part.  At  first  he  is  respectful; 
but  presently  his  enthusiasm  grows  too  much  for  him; 
he  begins  to  leap  and  frolic  and  utter  uncouth  praises 
of  things  in  general.  Then  Mike  turns  soberly  and 
moves  away. 

On  such  an  occasion,  the  chat  went  like  this : 

GISSING:    Do  you  believe  in  God? 

MIKE:  I  acknowledge  Him.  I  don't  believe  in 
Him. 

GISSING:  Oh,  I  think  He's  splendid.  Hurrah! 
Hullabaloo !  When  He  puts  on  those  old  khaki  trousers 
and  smokes  that  curve-stem  pipe  I  always  know  there's 
a  good  time  coming. 

MIKE  :  You  have  made  a  mistake.  That  is  not  God. 
God  is  a  tall,  placid,  slender  man,  who  wears  puttees 
when  He  works  in  the  garden  and  smokes  only  ciga- 
rettes. 

GISSING  :  Not  at  all.  God  is  quite  stout,  and  of  un- 
certain temper,  but  I  adore  Him. 

MIKE  :  No  one  knows  God  at  your  age.  There  is  but 
one  God,  and  I  have  described  Him.  There  is  no  doubt 
about  it,  because  He  sometimes  stays  away  from  the 
office  on  Saturdays.  Only  God  can  do  that. 

GISSING:  What  a  glorious  day  this  is.  What  ho! 
Halleluiah !  I  don't  suppose  you  know  what  fun  it  is  to 
run  round  in  circles.  How  ignorant  of  life  the  older 
generation  is. 

[  144  ] 


A  Dialogue 

MIKE:    Humph. 

GISSING:  Do  you  believe  in  Right  and  Wrong?  I 
mean,  are  they  absolute,  or  only  relative? 

MIKE:  When  I  was  in  my  prime  Right  was  Right, 
and  Wrong  was  Wrong.  A  bone,  buried  on  someone 
else's  ground,  was  sacred.  I  would  not  have  dreamed 
of  digging  it  up 

GISSING  (hastily):  But  I  am  genuinely  puzzled. 
Suppose  a  motor  truck  goes  down  the  road.  My  in- 
stinct tells  me  that  I  ought  to  chase  it  and  bark  loudly. 
But  if  God  is  around  He  calls  me  back  and  rebukes  me, 
sometimes  painfully.  Yet  I  am  convinced  that  there  is 
nothing  essentially  wrong  in  my  action. 

MIKE:  The  question  of  morals  is  not  involved.  If 
you  were  not  so  young  and  foolish  you  would  know  that 
your  God  (if  you  so  call  Him,  though  He  is  not  a  patch 
on  mine)  knows  what  is  good  for  you  better  than  you 
do  yourself.  He  forbids  your  chasing  cars  because  you 
might  get  hurt. 

GISSING:    Then  instinct  is  not  to  be  obeyed? 

MIKE:    Not  when  God  is  around. 

GISSING:  Yet  He  encourages  me  to  chase  sticks, 
which  my  instinct  strongly  impels  me  to  do.  Prosit! 
Waes  hael!  Excuse  my  enthusiasm,  but  you  really 
know  very  little  of  the  world  or  you  would  not  take 
things  so  calmly. 

MIKE  :  My  dear  boy,  rheumatism  is  a  great  sedative. 
You  will  learn  by  and  by.  What  are  you  making  such 
a  racket  about? 

GISSING:  I  have  just  learned  that  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  free  will.  I  don't  suppose  you  ever  meditated 

[145] 


Plum  Pudding 

on  these  things,  you  are  such  an  old  stick-in-the-mud. 
But  in  my  generation  we  scrutinize  everything. 

MIKE:  There  is  plenty  of  free  will  when  you  have 
learned  to  will  the  right  things.  But  there's  no  use 
willing  yourself  to  destroy  a  motor  truck,  because  it 
can't  be  done.  I  have  been  young,  and  now  am  old, 
but  never  have  I  seen  an  honest  dog  homeless,  nor  his 
pups  begging  their  bones.  You  will  go  to  the  devil  if 
you  don't  learn  to  restrain  yourself. 

GISSING:  Last  night  there  was  a  white  cat  in  the 
sky.  Yoicks,  yoicks!  I  ran  thirty  times  round  the 
house,  yelling. 

MIKE:     Only  the  moon,  nothing  to  bark  about. 

GISSING:  You  are  very  old,  and  I  do  not  think  you 
have  ever  really  felt  the  excitement  of  life.  Excuse  me, 
but  have  you  seen  me  jump  up  and  pull  the  baby's 
clothes  from  the  line?  It  is  glorious  fun. 

MIKE:  My  good  lad,  I  think  life  will  deal  hardly 
with  you. 

(Exit,  shaking  his  head.) 


[146 


AT  THE  GASTHOF  ZUM  OCHSEN 

LOOKING  over  some  several-days-old  papers  we  ob- 
serve that  the  truant  Mr.  Bergdoll  was  discovered 
at  Eberbach  in  Baden.  Well,  well,  we  meditate,  Herr 
Bergdoll  is  not  wholly  devoid  of  sense,  if  he  is  rambling 
about  that  delicious  valley  of  the  Neckar.  And  if  we 
were  a  foreign  correspondent,  anxious  to  send  home  to 
the  papers  a  complete  story  of  Herr  Bergdoll's  doings 
in  those  parts,  we  would  know  exactly  what  to  do. 
We  would  go  straight  to  the  excellent  Herr  Leutz, 
proprietor  of  the  Gasthof  zum  Ochsen  in  Eberbach, 
and  listen  to  his  prattle.  Herr  Leutz,  whom  we  have 
never  forgotten  (since  we  once  spent  a  night  in  his 
inn,  companioned  by  another  vagabond  who  is  now 
Prof.  W.  L.  G.  Williams  of  Cornell  University,  so  our 
clients  in  Ithaca,  if  any,  can  check  us  up  on  this  fact), 

[1471 


Plum  Pudding 

is  the  most  innocently  talkative  person  we  have  ever 
met. 

A  great  many  Americans  have  been  to  Alt  Heidelberg, 
but  not  so  many  have  continued  their  exploration  up 
the  Neckarthal.  You  leave  Heidelberg  by  the  Phi- 
losophers' Way  (Philosophenweg),  which  looks  over  the 
river  and  the  hills — in  this  case,  lit  by  a  warm  July 
sunset — and  follow  (on  your  bicycle,  of  course)  the  road 
which  skirts  the  stream.  There  are  many  springs  of 
cold  water  tinkling  down  the  steep  banks  on  your  left, 
and  in  the  mediaeval-looking  village  of  Hirschhorn  you 
can  also  sample  the  excellent  beer.  The  evening  smell 
of  sun-warmed  grass  and  a  view  of  one  of  those  odd 
boats  grinding  its  way  up-current  by  hauling  a  chain 
from  the  river-bed  and  dropping  it  again  over-stern 
will  do  nothing  to  mar  your  exhilaration.  It  will  be 
getting  dark  when  you  reach  Eberbach,  and  if  you  find 
your  way  to  the  Ox,  Herr  Leutz  will  be  waiting  (we 
hope)  in  his  white  coat  and  gold  pince-nez,  just  as  he 
was  in  1912.  And  then,  as  you  sit  down  to  a  cold  sup- 
per, he  will,  deliberately  and  in  the  kindest  way,  proceed 
to  talk  your  head  off.  He  will  sit  down  with  you  at  the 
table,  and  every  time  you  think  a  pause  is  coming  he 
will  seize  a  mug,  rise  to  his  feet  (at  which  you  also  will 
sadly  lay  down  your  tools  and  rise,  too,  bowing  stiffly 
from  your  hips),  and  cry:  "Also!  ich  trinke  auf  Ihr 
Wohl!"  Presently,  becoming  more  assured,  the  ad- 
mirable creature  abbreviates  his  formula  to  the  more 
companionable  "zum  Wohl ! "  And  as  he  talks,  and  his 
excitement  becomes  more  and  more  intense,  he  edges 
closer  and  closer  to  you,  and  leans  forward,  talking 

[148] 


At  the  Gasthof  Zum  Ochsen 

hard,  until  his  dark  beaming  phiz  quite  interposes  be- 
tween your  food  and  its  destination.  So  that  to  avoid 
combing  his  baldish  pate  with  your  fork  you  must  pass 
the  items  of  your  meal  in  quite  a  sideways  trajectory. 
And  if,  as  happened  to  our  companion  (the  present 
Cornell  don),  you  have  no  special  taste  for  a  plump 
landlord  breathing  passionately  and  genially  upon  your 
very  cheek  while  you  strive  to  satisfy  a  legitimate  ap- 
petite, you  may  burst  into  a  sudden  unpremeditate  but 
uncontrollable  screech  of  mingled  laughter  and  dismay, 
meanwhile  almost  falling  backward  in  your  chair  in  an 
effort  to  evade  the  steady  pant  and  roar  of  those  in- 
numerable gutturals. 

After  supper,  a  little  weary  and  eager  to  meditate 
calmly  in  the  delicious  clear  evening,  and  to  look  about 
and  see  what  sort  of  place  this  Eberbach  is,  you  will 
slip  outside  the  inn  for  a  stroll.  But  glorious  Herr 
Leutz  is  not  evadable.  He  comes  with.  He  takes  posi- 
tion between  you  two,  holding  each  firmly  by  an  elbow 
so  that  no  escape  is  possible.  In  a  terrific  stream  of 
friendliness  he  explains  everything,  particularly  expati- 
ating upon  the  gratification  he  feels  at  being  honoured 
by  visitors  all  the  way  from  America.  The  hills  around, 
which  stand  up  darkly  against  a  speckle  of  stars,  are 
all  discussed  for  you.  One  of  them  is  called  Katzen- 
buckel,  and  doubting  that  your  German  may  not  be  able 
to  cope  with  this  quite  simple  compound,  he  proceeds 
to  illustrate.  He  squats  in  the  middle  of  the  street, 
arching  his  back  like  a  cat  in  a  strong  emotion,  uttering 
lively  miaowings  and  hissings.  Then  he  springs,  like 
the  feline  in  fury,  and  leaps  to  his  feet  roaring  with 

[  1491 


Plum  Pudding 

mirth.  "You  see?"  he  cries.  "A  cat,  who  all  ready 
to  spring  crouches,  that  is  of  our  beautiful  little  moun- 
tain the  name-likeness." 

Yes,  if  Bergdoll  has  been  staying  in  Eberbach,  the 
good  Herr  Leutz  will  know  all  about  it. 


1150] 


MR  CONRAD'S  NEW  PREFACE 

JOSEPH  CONRAD,  so  we  learn  from  the  March 
Bookman,  has  written  a  preface  to  a  cook  book 
about  to  be  published  by  Mrs.  Conrad. 

We  like  to  think  about  that  preface.  We  wonder  if 
it  will  be  anything  like  this : 

I  remember  very  well  the  first  time  I  became  aware 
of  the  deep  and  consoling  significance  of  food.  It  was 
one  evening  at  Marlow's,  we  were  sitting  by  the  hearth 
in  that  small  gilded  circle  of  firelight  that  seems  so  like 
the  pitiful  consciousness  of  man,  temporarily  and  gal- 
lantly relieved  against  the  all-covering  darkness.  Mar- 
low  was  in  his  usual  posture,  cross-legged  on  the  rug. 
He  was  talking.  ...  I  couldn't  help  wondering 
whether  he  ever  gets  pins  and  needles  in  his  legs,  sitting 
so  long  in  one  position.  Very  often,  you  know,  what 

[151] 


Plum  Pudding 

those  Eastern  visionaries  mistake  for  the  authentic 
visit  of  Ghautama  Buddha  is  merely  pins  and  needles. 
However.  Humph.  Poor  Mrs.  Marlow  (have  I  men- 
tioned her  before?)  was  sitting  somewhere  in  the  rear 
of  the  circle.  I  had  a  curious  but  quite  distinct  impres- 
sion that  she  wanted  to  say  something,  that  she  had,  as 
people  say,  something  on  her  mind.  But  Marlow  has 
a  way  of  casting  pregnancy  over  even  his  pauses,  so 
that  to  speak  would  seem  a  quite  unpardonable  inter- 
ruption. 

"The  power  of  mind  over  matter,"  said  Marlow,  sud- 
denly, "a  very  odd  speculation.  When  I  was  on  the 
Soliloquy,  I  remember  one  evening,  in  the  fiery  serenity 
of  a  Sourabaja  sunset,  there  was  an  old  serang  .  .  ." 

In  the  ample  drawing  room,  lit  only  by  those  flicker- 
ing gleams  of  firelight,  I  seemed  to  see  the  others  stir 
faintly — not  so  much  a  physical  stir  as  a  half -divined 
spiritual  uneasiness.  The  Director  was  sitting  too 
close  to  the  glow,  for  the  fire  had  deepened  and  intens- 
ified as  the  great  logs  slowly  burned  into  rosy  embers, 
and  I  could  smell  a  whiff  of  scorching  trouser  legs;  but 
the  courageous  man  dared  not  move,  for  fear  of  breaking 
the  spell.  Marlow's  tale  was  a  powerful  one:  I  could 
hear  Mrs.  Marlow  suspire  faintly,  ever  so  faintly — the 
troubled,  small,  soft  sigh  of  a  brave  woman  indefinably 
stricken.  The  gallantry  of  women!  In  a  remote  part 
of  the  house  a  ship's  clock  tingled  its  quick  double 
strokes.  .  .  .  Eight  o'clock,  I  thought,  uncon- 
sciously translating  nautical  horology  into  the  dull 
measurements  of  landsmen.  None  of  us  moved.  The 
discipline  of  the  sea! 

[152] 


Mr.  Conrad's  New  Preface 

Mrs.  Marlow  was  very  pale.  It  began  to  come  over 
me  that  there  was  an  alien  presence,  something  spectral 
and  immanent,  something  empty  and  yet  compelling, 
in  the  mysterious  shadow  and  vagueness  of  the  chamber. 
More  than  once,  as  Marlow  had  coasted  us  along  those 
shining  seascapes  of  Malaya — we  had  set  sail  from  Ma- 
lacca at  tea  time,  and  had  now  got  as  far  as  Batu  Beru — 
I  had  had  an  uneasy  impression  that  a  disturbed  white 
figure  had  glanced  pallidly  through  the  curtains,  had 
made  a  dim  gesture,  and  had  vanished  again.  .  .  . 
I  had  tried  to  concentrate  on  Marlow's  narrative.  The 
dear  fellow  looked  more  like  a  monkey  than  ever, 
squatting  there,  as  he  took  the  Soliloquy  across  the 
China  Sea  and  up  the  coast  of  Surinam.  Surinam  must 
have  a  very  long  coast-line,  I  was  thinking.  But  per- 
haps it  was  that  typhoon  that  delayed  us.  .  .  . 
Really,  he  ought  not  to  make  his  descriptions  so  graphic, 
for  Mrs.  Marlow,  I  feared,  was  a  bad  sailor,  and  she  was 
beginning  to  look  quite  ill.  ...  I  caught  her 
looking  over  her  shoulder  in  a  frightened  shudder,  as 
though  seeking  the  companionway. 

It  was  quite  true.  By  the  time  we  had  reached  Ton- 
king,  I  felt  sure  there  was  someone  else  in  the  room. 
In  my  agitation  I  stole  a  cautious  glance  from  the  taff- 
rail  of  my  eye  and  saw  a  white  figure  standing  hesitantly 
by  the  door,  in  an  appalled  and  embarrassed  silence. 
The  Director  saw  it,  too,  for  he  was  leaning  as  far  away 
from  the  fire  as  he  could  without  jibing  his  chair,  and 
through  the  delicate  haze  of  roasting  tweed  that  sur- 
rounded him  I  could  see  something  wistfully  appealing 
in  his  glance.  The  Lawyer,  too,  had  a  mysterious 

[153] 


Plum  Pudding 

shimmer  in  his  loyal  eyes,  but  his  old  training  in  the  P. 
and  O.  service  had  been  too  strong  for  him.  He  would 
never  speak,  I  felt  sure,  while  his  commanding  officer 
had  the  floor. 

I  began  to  realize  that,  in  a  sense,  the  responsibility 
was  mine.  The  life  of  the  sea — a  curious  contradiction. 
Trained  from  boyhood  to  assume  responsibility,  but 
responsibility  graded  and  duly  ascending  through  the 
ranks  of  command.  Marlow,  an  old  shipmaster,  and 
more  than  that,  our  host — a  trying  problem.  If  it  had 
not  been  for  the  presence  of  Mrs.  Marlow,  I  could  not 
have  dared.  But  the  woman  complicates  the  situation 
with  all  sorts  of  delicate  reactions  of  tact,  conduct,  and 
necessity.  It  is  always  so.  Well.  Humph! 

But  the  apparition  at  the  other  end  of  the  room  was 
plainly  in  trouble.  A  distressing  sight,  and  I  divined 
that  the  others  were  relying  on  me.  Mrs.  Marlow, 
poor  soul,  her  face  had  a  piteous  and  luminous  appeal. 
It  was,  once  more,  the  old  and  shocking  question  of  con- 
flicting loyalties.  There  was  nothing  else  to  do.  I 
shoved  out  one  foot,  and  the  stand  of  fire-irons  fell  over 
with  an  appalling  clatter.  Marlow  broke  off — some- 
where near  Manila,  I  think  it  was. 

"Charlie,  my  dear,"  said  Mrs.  Marlow,  "Don't  you 
think  we  could  finish  the  story  after  dinner?  The  roast 
will  be  quite  spoiled.  The  maid  has  been  waiting  for 
nearly  two  hours.  .  .  ." 


[154 


THE  LITTLE  HOUSE 

AFTER  many  days  of  damp,  dull,  and  dolorous 
weather,  we  found  ourself  unexpectedly  moving  in 
a  fresh,  cool,  pure  air;  an  air  which,  although  there  was 
no  sunlight,  had  the  spirit  and  feeling  of  sunlight  in  it; 
an  air  which  was  purged  and  lively.  And,  so  strangely 
do  things  happen,  after  days  of  various  complexion  and 
stratagem,  we  found  ourself  looking  across  that  green 
field,  still  unchanged,  at  the  little  house. 

Wasn't  there — we  faintly  recall  a  saccharine  tune 
sung  by  someone  who  strode  stiffly  to  and  fro  in  a  glare 
of  amber  footlights — wasn't  there  a  song  about:  "And 
I  lo-ong  to  settle  down,  in  that  old  Long  Island  town!" 
Wasn't  there  such  a  ditty?  It  came  softly  back,  un- 
bidden, to  the  sentimental  attic  of  our  memory  as  we 
passed  along  that  fine  avenue  of  trees  and  revisited,  for 

[1551 


Plum  Pudding 

the  first  time  since  we  moved  away,  the  wide  space  of 
those  Long  Island  fields  and  the  row  of  frame  cottages. 
There  was  the  little  house,  rather  more  spick  and  span 
than  when  we  had  known  it,  freshly  painted  in  its  brown 
and  white,  the  privet  hedge  very  handsomely  shaven, 
and  its  present  occupant  busily  engaged  in  trimming 
some  tufts  of  grass  along  the  pavement.  We  did  not 
linger,  and  that  cheerful-looking  man  little  knew  how 
many  ghosts  he  was  living  among.  All  of  us,  we  sup- 
pose, dwell  amid  ghosts  we  are  not  aware  of,  and  this 
gentleman  would  be  startled  if  he  knew  the  tenacity 
and  assurance  of  certain  shades  who  moved  across  his 
small  lawn  that  afternoon. 

It  was  strange,  we  aver,  to  see  how  little  the  place 
had  changed,  for  it  seemed  that  we  had  passed  round 
the  curves  and  contours  of  a  good  many  centuries  in 
those  four  or  five  years.  In  the  open  meadow  the  cow 
was  still  grazing;  perhaps  the  same  cow  that  was  once 
pestered  by  a  volatile  Irish  terrier  who  used  to  swing 
merrily  at  the  end  of  that  cow's  tail;  a  merry  and  ir- 
responsible little  creature,  she  was,  and  her  phantom 
still  scampers  the  road  where  the  sharp  scream  of  the 
Preeport  trolley  brings  back  her  last  fatal  venture  to 
our  mind.  It  was  strange  to  look  at  those  windows, 
with  their  neat  white  sills,  and  to  remember  how  we 
felt  when  for  the  first  time  we  slept  in  a  house  of  our  own, 
with  all  those  Long  Island  stars  crowding  up  to  the 
open  window,  and,  waking  in  drowsy  unbelief,  put  out 
a  hand  to  touch  the  strong  wall  and  see  if  it  was  still 
there.  Perhaps  one  may  be  pardoned  for  being  a  little 
sentimental  in  thinking  back  about  one's  first  house. 

[156] 


The  Little  House 

The  air,  on  that  surprising  afternoon,  carried  us  again 
into  the  very  sensation  and  reality  of  those  days,  for 
there  is  an  openness  and  breezy  stir  on  those  plains 
that  is  characteristic.  In  the  tree-lined  streets  of  the 
village,  where  old  white  clapboarded  houses  with  green 
or  pale  blue  shutters  stand  in  a  warm  breath  of  box 
hedges,  the  feeling  is  quite  different.  Out  on  the  Long 
Island  prairie — which  Walt  Whitman,  by  the  way,  was 
one  of  the  first  to  love  and  praise — you  stand  uncovered 
to  all  the  skirmish  of  heaven,  and  the  feathery  grasses 
are  rarely  still.  There  was  the  chimney  of  the  fireplace 
we  had  built  for  us,  and  we  remembered  how  the  wood- 
smoke  used  to  pour  gallantly  from  it  like  a  blue  pennon 
of  defiance.  The  present  owner,  we  fear,  does  not  know 
how  much  impalpable  and  unforgotten  gold  leaped  up 
the  wide  red  throat  of  that  chimney,  or  he  would  not 
dream  of  selling.  Yes,  the  neighbours  tell  us  that  he 
wants  to  sell.  In  our  day,  the  house  was  said  to  be 
worth  $3,000.  Nowadays,  the  price  is  $7,000.  Even 
at  that  it  is  cheap,  if  you  set  any  value  on  amiable  and 
faithful  ghosts. 

Oh,  little  house  on  the  plains,  when  our  typewriter 
forgets  thee,  may  this  shift  key  lose  its  function ! 


157] 


TADPOLES 

NEAR  our  house,  out  in  the  sylvan  Salamis  Estates, 
there  is  a  pond.  We  fear  we  cannot  describe  this 
pond  to  you  in  a  way  to  carry  conviction.  You 
will  think  we  exaggerate  if  we  tell  you,  with  honest 
warmth,  how  fair  the  prospect  is.  Therefore,  in  sketch- 
ing the  scene,  we  will  be  austere,  churlish,  a  miser  of 
adjectives.  We  will  tell  you  naught  of  sun-sparkle  by 
day  where  the  green  and  gold  of  April  linger  in  that 
small  hollow  landskip,  where  the  light  shines  red 
through  the  faint  bronze  veins  of  young  leaves — much 
as  it  shines  red  through  the  finger  joinings  of  a  child's 
hand  held  toward  the  sun.  We  will  tell  you  naught  of 
frog-song  by  night,  of  those  reduplicated  whistlings 
and  peepings.  We  will  tell  you  naught  of.  ... 
No,  we  will  be  austere. 

On  one  side,  this  pond  reflects  the  white  cloudy  brav- 
ery of  fruit  trees  in  flower,  veterans  of  an  orchard  sur- 
viving an  old  farmhouse  that  stood  on  the  hilltop  long 
ago.  It  burned,  we  believe:  only  a  rectangle  of  low 
stone  walls  remains.  Opposite,  the  hollow  is  over- 
looked by  a  bumpy  hillock  fringed  with  those  excellent 

[1581 


Tadpoles 

dark  evergreen  trees — shall  we  call  them  hemlocks? — 
whose  flat  fronds  silhouette  against  the  sky  and  con- 
tribute a  feeling  of  mystery  and  wilderness.  On  this 
little  hill  are  several  japonica  trees,  in  violent  ruddy 
blossom;  and  clumps  of  tiger  lily  blades  springing  up; 
and  bloodroots.  The  region  prickles  thickly  with 
blackberry  brambles,  and  mats  of  honeysuckle.  Across 
the  pond,  looking  from  the  waterside  meadow  where 
the  first  violets  are,  your  gaze  skips  (like  a  flat  stone 
deftly  flung)  from  the  level  amber  (dimpled  with 
silver)  of  the  water,  through  a  convenient  dip  of  country 
where  the  fields  are  folded  down  below  the  level  of  the 
pool.  So  the  eye,  skittering  across  the  water,  leaps 
promptly  and  cleanly  to  blue  ranges  by  the  Sound,  a 
couple  of  miles  away.  All  this,  mere  introduction  to 
the  real  theme,  which  is  Tadpoles. 

We  intended  to  write  a  poem  about  those  tadpoles, 
but  Endymion  tells  us  that  Louis  Untermeyer  has  al- 
ready smitten  a  lute  on  that  topic.  We  are  queasy  of 
trailing  such  an  able  poet.  Therefore  we  celebrate 
these  tadpoles  in  prose.  They  deserve  a  prose  as  lucid, 
as  limpid,  as  cool  and  embracing,  as  the  water  of  their 
home. 

Coming  back  to  tadpoles,  the  friends  of  our  youth, 
shows  us  that  we  have  completed  a  biological  cycle  of 
much  import.  Back  to  tadpoles  in  one  generation,  as 
the  adage  might  have  said.  Twenty-five  years  ago 
we  ourself  were  making  our  first  acquaintance  with 
these  friendly  creatures,  in  the  immortal  (for  us)  Waters 
of  Cobb's  Creek,  Pennsylvania.  (Who  was  Cobb,  we 
wonder?)  And  now  our  urchins,  with  furious  glee, 

[159] 


Plum  Pudding 

applaud  their  sire  who  wades  the  still  frosty  quags  of 
our  pond,  on  Sunday  mornings,  to  renew  their  supply  of 
tads.  It  is  considered  fair  and  decent  that  each  batch 
of  tadpoles  should  live  in  their  prison  (a  milk  bottle) 
only  one  week.  The  following  Sunday  they  go  back  to 
the  pond,  and  a  new  generation  take  their  places. 
There  is  some  subtle  kinship,  we  think,  between  children 
and  tadpoles.  No  childhood  is  complete  until  it  has 
watched  their  sloomy  and  impassive  faces  munching 
against  the  glass,  and  seen  the  gradual  egress  (as  the 
encyclopaedia  pedantically  puts  it)  of  their  tender 
limbs,  the  growing  froggishness  of  their  demeanour. 

Some  time  when  you  are  exploring  in  the  Britannica, 
by  the  way,  after  you  have  read  about  Tactics  and 
William  Howard  Taft,  turn  to  the  article  on  Tadpoles 
and  see  if  you  can  recognize  them  as  described  by  the 
learned  G.  A.  B.  An  amusing  game,  we  submit,  would 
be  to  take  a  number  of  encyclopaedia  descriptions  of 
familiar  things,  and  see  how  many  of  our  friends  could 
identify  them  under  their  scientific  nomenclature. 

But  it  is  very  pleasant  to  dally  about  the  pond  on  a 
mild  April  morning.  While  the  Urchiness  mutters 
among  the  violets,  picking  blue  fistfuls  of  stalkless 
heads,  the  Urchin,  on  a  plank  at  the  waterside,  studies 
these  weedy  shallows  which  are  lively  with  all  manner  of 
mysterious  excitement,  and  probes  a  waterlogged  stump 
in  hope  to  recapture  Brer  Tarrypin,  who  once  was  ours 
for  a  short  while.  Gissing  (the  juvenile  and  too  enthu- 
siastic dog)  has  to  be  kept  away  from  the  pond  by 
repeated  sticks  thrown  as  far  as  possible  in  another  direc- 
tion; otherwise  he  insists  on  joining  the  tadpole  search, 

[160] 


Tadpoles 

and,  poking  his  snout  under  water,  attempts  to  bark  at 
the  same  time,  with  much  coughing  and  smother. 

The  tadpoles,  once  caught,  are  taken  home  in  a  small 
yellow  pail.  They  seem  quite  cheerful.  They  are 
kept,  of  course,  in  their  native  fluid,  which  is  liberally 
thickened  with  the  oozy  emulsion  of  moss,  mud,  and 
busy  animalculae  that  were  dredged  up  with  them  in 
clutches  along  the  bottom  of  the  pond.  They  lie, 
thoughtful,  at  the  bottom  of  their  milk  bottle,  occasion- 
ally flourishing  furiously  round  their  prison.  But, 
since  reading  that  article  in  the  Britannica,  we  are  more 
tender  toward  them.  For  the  learned  G.  A.  B.  says: 
"A  glandular  streak  extending  from  the  nostril  toward 
the  eye  is  the  lachrymal  canal."  Is  it  possible  that 
tadpoles  weep?  We  will  look  at  them  again  when  we 
go  home  to-night.  We  are,  in  the  main,  a  kind-hearted 
host.  If  they  show  any  signs  of  effusion.  .  .  . 


[161] 


MAGIC  IN  SALAMIS 

WHY  is  it  (we  were  wondering,  as  we  walked  to 
the  station)  that  these  nights  of  pearly  wet  Long 
Island  fog  make  the  spiders  so  active?  The  sun  was  try- 
ing to  break  through  the  mist,  and  all  the  way  down  the 
road  trees,  bushes,  and  grass  were  spangled  with  cob- 
webs, shining  with  tiny  pricks  and  gems  of  moisture. 
These  damp,  mildewy  nights  that  irritate  us  and  bring 
that  queer  soft  grayish  fur  on  the  backs  of  our  books 
seem  to  mean  high  hilarity  and  big  business  to  the 
spider.  Along  the  hedge  near  the  station  there  were 
wonderful  great  webs,  as  big  as  the  shield  of  Achilles- 
What  a  surprising  passion  of  engineering  the  spider 
must  go  through  in  the  dark  hours,  to  get  his  struts  and 
cantilevers  and  his  circling  gossamer  girders  properly 
disposed  on  the  foliage.*  Darkness  is  no  difficulty  to 

*  Perhaps  the  structural  talent  of  our  Salamis  arachnids  is  exceptional.  Perhaps 
it  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the  famous  Engineers'  Country  Club  is  near  by.  Can  the 
spiders  have  learned  their  technology  by  watching  those  cheerful  scientists  on  the  golf 
greens? 

[162] 


Magic  in  Salamis 

him,  evidently.  If  he  lays  his  web  on  the  grass,  he 
builds  it  with  a  little  tunnel  leading  down  to  earth, 
where  he  hides  waiting  his  breakfast.  But  on  such  a 
morning,  apparently,  with  thousands  of  webs  ready, 
there  can  hardly  have  been  enough  flies  to  go  round; 
for  we  saw  all  the  appetent  spiders  had  emerged 
from  their  tubes  and  were  waiting  impatiently  on  the 
web  itself — as  though  the  host  should  sit  on  the  table- 
cloth waiting  for  his  guest.  Put  a  finger  at  the  rim  of 
the  web  and  see  how  quickly  he  vanishes  down  his 
shaft.  Most  surprising  of  all  it  is  to  see  the  long  threads 
that  are  flung  horizontally  through  the  air,  from  a  low 
branch  of  a  tree  to  the  near-by  hedge.  They  hang, 
elastic  and  perfect,  sagged  a  little  by  a  run  of  fog-drops 
almost  invisible  except  where  the  wetness  catches  the 
light.  Some  were  stretched  at  least  six  feet  across 
space,  with  no  supporting  strands  to  hold  them  from 
above — and  no  branches  from  which  the  filament  could 
be  dropped.  How  is  it  done?  Does  our  intrepid 
weaver  hurl  himself  madly  six  feet  into  the  dark,  trust- 
ing to  catch  the  leaf  at  the  other  end?  Can  he  jump  so 
far? 

All  this  sort  of  thing  is,  quite  plainly,  magic.  It  is 
rather  important  to  know,  when  you  are  dealing  with 
magic,  just  where  ordinary  life  ends  and  the  mystery 
begins,  so  that  you  can  adjust  yourself  to  incantations 
and  spells.  As  you  make  your  green  escape  from  town 
(which  has  magic  of  its  own,  but  quite  different)  you 
must  clearly  mark  the  place  where  you  pierce  the  veil. 
We  showed  it  to  Endymion  lately.  We  will  tell  you 
about  it. 

[163] 


Plum  Pudding 

There  is  a  certain  point,  as  you  go  out  to  Salamis  on 
the  railroad,  when  you  begin  to  perceive  a-  breath  of 
enchantment  in  the  landscape.  For  our  own  part,  we 
become  aware  of  a  subtle  spice  of  gramarye  as  soon  as 
we  see  the  station  lamps  at  East  Williston,  which  have 
tops  like  little  green  hats.  Lamps  of  this  sort  have 
always  had  a  fascination  for  us,  and  whenever  we  see 
them  at  a  railway  station  we  have  a  feeling  that  that 
would  be  a  nice  place  to  get  off  and  explore. 

And,  of  course,  after  you  pass  East  Williston  there 
is  that  little  pond  in  which,  if  one  went  fishing,  he  could 
very  likely  pull  up  a  fine  fleecy  cloud  on  his  hook.  Then 
the  hills  begin,  or  what  we  on  Long  Island  consider  hills. 
There  are  some  fields  on  the  left  of  the  train  that  roll 
like  great  green  waves  of  the  sea ;  they  surge  up  against 
the  sky  and  seem  about  to  spill  over  in  a  surf  of  daisies. 

A  quiet  road  runs  up  a  hill,  and  as  soon  as  you  pass 
along  its  green  channel,  between  rising  thickets  where 
rabbits  come  out  to  gape,  you  feel  as  though  walking 
into  a  poem  by  Walter  de  la  Mare.  This  road,  if 
pursued,  passes  by  a  pleasing  spot  where  four  ways 
cross  in  an  attenuated  X.  Off  to  one  side  is  a  field  that 
is  very  theatrical  in  effect:  it  always  reminds  us  of  a 
stage  set  for  "As  You  Like  It,"  the  Forest  of  Arden. 
There  are  some  gigantic  oak  trees  and  even  some  very 
papier-mache-looking  stumps,  all  ready  for  the  duke, 
"and  other  Lords,  like  Foresters,"  to  do  their  moralizing 
upon ;  and  in  place  of  the  poor  sequestered  stag  there  is 
a  very  fine  plushy  cow,  grazing,  hard  Ly  a  very  agree- 
able morass.  At  the  back  (L.  U.  E.)  is  discovered  a 
pleasing  ruin,  the  carcass  of  an  ancient  farmstead, 

[164] 


Magic  in  Salamis 

whose  stony  ribs  are  thickset  with  brambles;  and  the 
pleasant  melancholy  of  an  abandoned  orchard  rounds 
off  the  scene  in  the  wings,  giving  a  fine  place  for  Rosa- 
lind and  Celia  and  the  leg-weary  Touchstone  to  abide 
their  cue. 

Choosing  the  left-hand  arm  of  the  X,  and  moving 
past  wild  rose  bushes  toward  the  even  richer  rose- 
garden  of  the  sunset,  the  fastidious  truant  is  ushered 
(as  was  our  friend  Endymion  the  other  evening)  upon 
a  gentle  meadow  where  a  solitary  house  of  white  stucco 
begs  for  a  poet  as  occupant.  This  house,  having  been 
selected  by  Titania  and  ourself  as  a  proper  abode  for 
Endymion  and  his  family,  we  waited  until  sunset, 
frogsong,  and  all  the  other  amenities  of  life  in  Salamis 
were  suitable  for  the  introduction  of  our  guest  to  the 
scene.  This  dwelling,  having  long  lain  untenanted, 
has  a  back  door  that  stands  ajar  and  we  piloted  the  awe- 
struck lyrist  inside.  Now  nothing  rages  so  merrily  in 
the  blood  as  the  instinct  of  picking  out  houses  for  other 
people,  houses  that  you  yourself  do  not  have  to  live  in; 
and  those  Realtors  whom  we  have  dismayed  by  our 
lack  of  enthusiasm  would  have  been  startled  to  hear 
the  orotund  accents  in  which  we  vouched  for  that  prop- 
erty, sewage,  messuage,  and  all.  Here,  we  cried,  is  the 
front  door  (facing  the  sunset)  where  the  postman  will 
call  with  checks  from  your  publishers;  and  here  are  the 
porcelain  laundry  tubs  that  will  make  glad  the  heart  of 
the  washerwoman  (when  you  can  get  one). 

Endymion's  guileless  heart  was  strongly  uplifted. 
Not  a  question  did  he  ask  as  to  heating  arrangements, 
save  to  show  a  mild  spark  in  his  eye  when  he  saw  the 

[1651 


Plum  Pudding 

two  fireplaces.  Plumbing  was  to  him,  we  saw,  a  matter 
to  be  taken  on  faith.  His  paternal  heart  was  slightly 
perturbed  by  a  railing  that  ran  round  the  top  of  the 
stairs.  This  railing,  he  feared,  was  so  built  that  small 
and  impetuous  children  would  assuredly  fall  headlong 
through  it,  and  we  discussed  means  of  thwarting  such 
catastrophe.  But  upstairs  we  found  the  room  that 
caused  our  guest  to  glimmer  with  innocent  cheer.  It 
had  tall  casement  windows  looking  out  upon  a  quiet 
glimpse  of  trees.  It  had  a  raised  recess,  very  apt  for  a 
bust  of  Pallas.  It  had  space  for  bookcases.  And  then, 
on  the  windowsill,  we  found  the  dead  and  desiccated 
corpse  of  a  swallow.  It  must  have  flown  in  through  a 
broken  pane  on  the  ground  floor  long  ago  and  swooped 
vainly  about  the  empty  house.  It  lay,  pathetically, 
close  against  the  shut  pane.  Like  a  forgotten  and  un- 
uttered  beauty  in  the  mind  of  a  poet,  it  lay  there, 
stiffened  and  silent. 


[166] 


CONSIDER  THE  COMMUTER 

T  7[  THEN  they  tell  us  the  world  is  getting  worse  and 
V  V  worse,  and  the  follies  and  peevishness  of  men  will 
soon  bring  us  all  to  some  damnable  perdition,  we  are 
consoled  by  contemplating  the  steadfast  virtue  of  com- 
muters. The  planet  grows  harder  and  harder  to  live  on, 
it  is  true;  every  new  invention  makes  things  more  com- 
plicated and  perplexing.  These  new  automatic  tele- 
phones, which  are  said  to  make  the  business  of  getting 
a  number  so  easy,  will  mean  (we  suppose)  that  we  will 
be  called  up  fifty  times  a  day — instead  of  (as  now)  a 
mere  twenty  or  thirty,  while  we  are  swooning  and 
swinking  over  a  sonnet.  But  more  and  more  people 
are  taking  to  commuting  and  we  look  to  that  to  save 
things. 

[167] 


Plum  Pudding 

Because  commuting  is  a  tough  and  gruelling  dis- 
cipline. It  educes  all  the  latent  strength  and  virtue 
in  a  man  (although  it  is  hard  on  those  at  home,  for  when 
he  wins  back  at  supper  time  there  is  left  in  him  very 
little  of  what  the  ladies  so  quaintly  call  "soul").  If 
you  study  the  demeanour  of  fellow-passengers  on  the 
8 :04  and  the  5  :£7  you  will  see  a  quiet  and  well-drilled 
acceptiveness,  a  pious  non-resistance,  which  is  not  un- 
worthy of  the  antique  Chinese  sages. 

Is  there  any  ritual  (we  cry,  warming  to  our  theme) 
so  apt  to  imbue  the  spirit  with  patience,  stolidity,  en- 
durance, all  the  ripe  and  seasoned  qualities  of  manhood? 
It  is  well  known  that  the  fiercest  and  most  terrible 
fighters  in  the  late  war  were  those  who  had  been  com- 
muters. It  was  a  Division  composed  chiefly  of  com- 
muters that  stormed  the  Hindenburg  Stellung  and 
purged  the  Argonne  thickets  with  flame  and  steel. 
Their  commanding  officers  were  wont  to  remark  these 
men's  carelessness  of  Me.  It  seemed  as  though  they 
hardly  heeded  whether  they  got  home  again  or  not. 

See  them  as  they  stand  mobbed  at  the  train  gate, 
waiting  for  admission  to  the  homeward  cars.  A  certain 
disingenuous  casualness  appears  on  those  hardened 
brows;  but  beneath  burn  stubborn  fires.  These  are 
engaged  in  battle,  and  they  know  it — a  battle  that 
never  ends.  And  while  a  warfare  that  goes  on  without 
truce  necessarily  develops  its  own  jokes,  informalities, 
callousnesses,  disregard  of  wounds  and  gruesome  sights, 
yet  deep  in  their  souls  the  units  never  forget  that  they 
are  drilled  and  regimented  for  struggle.  We  stood  the 
other  evening  with  a  Freeport  man  in  the  baggage  com- 

[1681 


Consider  the  Commuter 

partment  at  the  front  of  a  train  leaving  Brooklyn.  We 
two  had  gained  the  bull's-eye  window  at  the  nose  of  the 
train  and  sombrely  watched  the  sparkling  panorama  of 
lights  along  the  track.  Something  had  gone  wrong 
with  the  schedule  that  evening,  and  the  passengers  of 
the  5 :27  had  been  shunted  to  the  5 :30.  As  fellow  mari- 
ners will,  we  discussed  famous  breakdowns  of  old  and 
the  uncertainties  of  the  commuter's  life.  "Yes,"  said 
our  companion,  "once  you  leave  home  you  never  know 
when  you'll  get  back."  And  he  smiled  the  passive, 
placable  smile  of  the  experienced  commuter. 

It  is  this  reasonable  and  moderate  temper  that  makes 
the  commuter  the  seed  wherewith  a  new  generation 
shall  be  disseminated.  He  faces  troubles  manifold 
without  embittered  grumbling.  His  is  a  new  kind  of 
Puritanism,  which  endures  hardship  without  dourness. 
When,  on  Christmas  Eve,  the  train  out  of  Jamaica  was 
so  packed  that  the  aisle  was  one  long  mass  of  unwill- 
ingly embraced  passengers,  and  even  the  car  platforms 
were  crowded  with  shivering  wights,  and  the  conductor 
buffeted  his  way  as  best  he  could  over  our  toes  and  our 
parcels  of  tinsel  balls,  what  was  the  general  cry?  Was 
it  a  yell  against  the  railroad  for  not  adding  an  extra 
brace  of  cars?  No,  it  was  good-natured  banter  of  the 
perspiring  little  officer  as  he  struggled  to  disentangle 
himself  from  forests  of  wedged  legs.  "You've  got  a 
fine,  big  family  in  here,"  they  told  him:  "you  ought  to 
be  proud  of  us . "  And  there  was  a  sorrowing  Italian  who 
had  with  him  a  string  of  seven  children  who  had  tunnelled 
and  burrowed  their  way  down  the  packed  aisle  of  the 
smoking  car  and  had  got  irretrievably  scattered.  The 

[169] 


Plum  Pudding 

father  was  distracted.  Here  and  there,  down  the 
length  of  the  car,  someone  would  discover  an  urchin 
and  hold  him  up  for  inspection.  "  Is  this  one  of  them?  " 
he  would  cry,  and  Italy  would  give  assent.  "Right!" 
And  the  children  were  agglomerated  and  piled  in  a  heap 
in  the  middle  of  the  car  until  such  time  as  a  thinning 
of  the  crowd  permitted  the  anxious  and  blushing  sire 
to  reassemble  them  and  reprove  their  truancy  with 
Adriatic  lightnings  from  his  dark  glowing  eyes. 

How  pleasing  is  our  commuter's  simplicity!  A  cage 
of  white  mice,  or  a  crated  goat  (such  are  to  be  seen  now 
and  then  on  the  Jamaica  platform)  will  engage  his  eye 
and  give  him  keen  amusement.  Then  there  is  that 
game  always  known  (in  the  smoking  car)  as  "pea- 
knuckle."  The  sight  of  four  men  playing  will  afford 
contemplative  and  apparently  intense  satisfaction 
to  all  near.  They  will  lean  diligently  over  seat-backs 
to  watch  every  play  of  the  cards.  They  will  stand  in 
the  aisle  to  follow  the  game,  with  apparent  compre- 
hension. Then  there  are  distinguished  figures  that 
move  through  the  observant  commuter's  peep-show. 
There  is  the  tall  young  man  with  the  beaky  nose,  which 
(as  Herrick  said) 

Is  the  grace 

And  proscenium  of  his  face. 

He  is  one  of  several  light-hearted  and  carefree  gentry 
who  always  sit  together  and  are  full  of  superb  cheer. 
Those  who  travel  sometimes  with  twinges  of  perplexity 
or  skepticism  are  healed  when  they  see  the  magnificent 
assurance  of  this  creature.  Every  day  we  hear  him 

[170] 


Consider  the  Commuter 

making  dates  for  his  cronies  to  meet  him  at  lunch 
time,  and  in  the  evening  we  see  him  towering  above 
the  throng  at  the  gate.  We  like  his  confident  air 
toward  life,  though  he  is  still  a  little  too  jocular  to  be 
a  typical  commuter. 

But  the  commuter,  though  simple  and  anxious  to  be 
pleased,  is  shrewdly  alert.  Every  now  and  then  they 
shuffle  the  trains  at  Jamaica  just  to  keep  him  guessing 
and  sharpen  his  faculty  of  judging  whether  this  train 
goes  to  Brooklyn  or  Penn  Station.  His  decisions 
have  to  be  made  rapidly.  We  are  speaking  now  of 
Long  Island  commuters,  whom  we  know  best ;  but  com- 
muters are  the  same  wherever  you  find  them.  The 
Jersey  commuter  has  had  his  own  celebrant  in  Joyce 
Kilmer,  and  we  hope  that  he  knows  Joyce's  pleasant 
essay  on  the  subject  which  was  published  in  that  little 
book,  "The  Circus  and  Other  Essays."  But  we  gain- 
say the  right  of  Staten  Islanders  to  be  classed  as  com- 
muters. These  are  a  proud  and  active  sort  who  are 
really  seafarers,  not  commuters.  Fogs  and  ice  floes 
make  them  blench  a  little;  but  the  less  romantic  troubles 
of  broken  brake-shoes  leave  them  unscotched. 

Of  Long  Island  commuters  there  are  two  classes: 
those  who  travel  to  Penn  Station,  those  who  travel  to 
Brooklyn.  Let  it  not  be  denied,  there  is  a  certain  air 
of  aristocracy  about  the  Penn  Station  clique  that  we 
cannot  waive.  Their  tastes  are  more  delicate.  The 
train-boy  from  Penn  Station  cries  aloud  "Choice,  deli- 
cious apples,"  which  seems  to  us  almost  an  affectation 
compared  to  the  hoarse  yell  of  our  Brooklyn  news- 
agents imploring  "Have  a  comic  cartoon  book,  'Mutt 

[171] 


Plum  Pudding 

and  Jeff/  *  Bringing  Up  Father,*  choclut-covered  cher- 
ries!*' The  club  cars  all  go  to  Penn  Station:  there 
would  be  a  general  apoplexy  in  the  lowly  terminal  at 
Atlantic  Avenue  if  one  of  those  vehicles  were  seen  there. 
People  are  often  seen  (on  the  Penn  Station  branch)  who 
look  exactly  like  the  advertisements  in  Vanity  Fair. 
Yet  we,  for  our  humility,  have  treasures  of  our  own, 
such  as  the  brightly  lighted  little  shops  along  Atlantic 
Avenue  and  a  station  with  the  poetic  name  of  Autumn 
Avenue.  The  Brooklyn  commuter  points  with  pride  to 
his  monthly  ticket,  which  is  distinguished  from  that  of 
the  Penn  Station  nobility  by  a  red  badge  of  courage — 
a  bright  red  stripe.  On  the  Penn  Station  branch  they 
often  punch  the  tickets  with  little  diamond-shaped 
holes;  but  on  our  line  the  punch  is  in  the  form  of  a 
heart. 

When  the  humble  commuter  who  is  accustomed  to 
travelling  via  Brooklyn  is  diverted  from  his  accus- 
tomed orbit,  and  goes  by  way  of  the  Pennsylvania 
Station,  what  surprising  excitements  are  his.  The 
enormousness  of  the  crowd  at  Penn  Station  around 
5  P.  M.  causes  him  to  realize  that  what  he  had  thought, 
in  his  innocent  Brooklyn  fashion,  was  a  considerable 
mob,  was  nothing  more  than  a  trifling  scuffle.  But  he 
notes  with  pleasure  the  Penn  Station  habit  of  letting 
people  through  the  gate  before  the  train  comes  in,  so 
that  one  may  stand  in  comparative  comfort  and  cool- 
ness downstairs  on  the  train  platform.  Here  a  vision 
of  luxury  greets  his  eyes  that  could  not  possibly  be 
imagined  at  the  Brooklyn  terminal — the  Lehigh  Valley 
dining  car  that  stands  on  a  neighbouring  track,  the  pink 

[172] 


Consider  the  Commuter 

candles  lit  on  the  tables,  the  shining  water  carafes,  the 
white-coated  stewards  at  attention.  At  the  car's 
kitchen  window  lolls  a  young  coloured  boy  in  a  chef's 
hat,  surveying  the  files  of  proletarian  commuters  with 
a  glorious  calmness  of  scorn  and  superiority.  His  mood 
of  sanguine  assurance  and  self-esteem  is  so  complete, 
so  unruffled,  and  so  composed  that  we  cannot  help 
loving  him.  Lucky  youth,  devoid  of  cares,  responsi- 
bilities, and  chagrins !  Does  he  not  belong  to  the  con- 
quering class  that  has  us  all  under  its  thumb?  What 
does  it  matter  that  he  (probably)  knows  less  about 
cooking  than  you  or  I?  He  gazes  with  glorious  cheer 
upon  the  wretched  middle  class,  and  as  our  train  rolls 
away  we  see  him  still  gazing  across  the  darkling  cellars 
of  the  station  with  that  untroubled  gleam  of  condescen- 
sion, his  eyes  seeming  (as  we  look  back  at  them)  as 
large  and  white  and  unspeculative  as  billiard  balls. 
In  the  eye  of  one  commuter,  the  12 :50  SATURDAY 
ONLY  is  the  most  exciting  train  of  all.  What  a  gay, 
heavily-bundled,  and  loquacious  crowd  it  is  that  gathers 
by  the  gate  at  the  Atlantic  Avenue  terminal.  There  is 
a  holiday  spirit  among  the  throng,  which  pants  a  little 
after  the  battle  down  and  up  those  steps  leading  from  the 
subway.  (What  a  fine  sight,  incidentally,  is  the  stag- 
like  stout  man  who  always  leaps  from  the  train  first  and 
speeds  scuddingly  along  the  platform,  to  reach  the 
stairs  before  any  one  else.)  Here  is  the  man  who  al- 
ways carries  a  blue  cardboard  box  full  of  chicks.  Their 
plaintive  chirpings  sound  shrill  and  disconsolate. 
There  is  such  a  piercing  sorrow  and  perplexity  in  their 
persistent  query  that  one  knows  they  have  the  true 

[173] 


Plum  Pudding 

souls  of  minor  poets.  Here  are  two  cheerful  stenog- 
raphers off  to  Rockaway  for  the  week-end.  They  are 
rather  sarcastic  about  another  young  woman  of  their 
party  who  always  insists  on  sleeping  under  sixteen 
blankets  when  at  the  shore. 

But  the  high  point  of  the  trip  comes  when  one  changes 
at  Jamaica,  there  boarding  the  1 :15  for  Salamis.  This 
is  the  train  that  on  Saturdays  takes  back  the  two 
famous  club  cars,  known  to  all  travellers  on  the  Oyster 
Bay  route.  Behind  partly  drawn  blinds  the  luncheon 
tables  are  spread;  one  gets  narrow  glimpses  of  the  great 
ones  of  the  Island  at  their  tiffin.  This  is  a  militant 
moment  for  the  white- jacketed  steward  of  the  club 
car.  On  Saturdays  there  are  always  some  strangers, 
unaccustomed  to  the  ways  of  this  train,  who  regard 
the  two  wagons  of  luxury  as  a  personal  affront.  When 
they  find  all  the  seats  in  the  other  cars  filled  they  sternly 
desire  to  storm  the  door  of  the  club  car,  where  the 
proud  steward  stands  on  guard.  "What's  the  matter 
with  this  car?"  they  say.  "Nothing's  the  matter  with 
it,"  he  replies.  Other  more  humble  commuters  stand 
in  the  vestibule,  enjoying  these  little  arguments.  It 
is  always  quite  delightful  to  see  the  indignation  of  these 
gallant  creatures,  their  faces  seamed  with  irritation  to 
think  that  there  should  be  a  holy  of  holies  into  which 
they  may  not  tread. 

A  proud  man,  and  a  high-spirited,  is  the  conductor 
of  the  4:27  on  weekdays.  This  train,  after  leaving 
Jamaica,  does  not  stop  until  Salamis  is  reached.  It 
attains  such  magnificent  speed  that  it  always  gets  to 
Salamis  a  couple  of  minutes  ahead  of  time.  Then 

[174] 


Consider  the  Commuter 

stands  the  conductor  on  the  platform,  watch  in  hand, 
receiving  the  plaudits  of  those  who  get  off.  The  Sa- 
lamites  have  to  stand  patiently  beside  the  train — it  is 
a  level  crossing — until  it  moves  on.  This  is  the  daily 
glory  of  this  conductor,  as  he  stands,  watch  in  one  hand, 
the  other  hand  on  the  signal  cord,  waiting  for  Time  to 
catch  up  with  him.  "Some  train,"  we  cry  up  at  him; 
he  tries  not  to  look  pleased,  but  he  is  a  happy  man. 
Then  he  pulls  the  cord  and  glides  away. 

Among  other  articulations  in  the  anatomy  of  com- 
muting, we  mention  the  fact  that  no  good  trainman 
ever  speaks  of  a  train  going  or  stopping  anywhere.  He 
says,  "This  train  makes  Sea  Cliff  and  Glen  Cove;  it 
don't  make  Salamis."  To  be  more  purist  still,  one 
should  refer  to  the  train  as  "he"  (as  a  kind  of  extension 
of  the  engineer's  personality,  we  suppose) .  If  you  want 
to  speak  with  the  tongue  of  a  veteran,  you  will  say,  "He 
makes  Sea  Cliff  and  Glen  Cove." 

The  commuter  has  a  chance  to  observe  all  manner 
of  types  among  his  brethren.  On  our  line  we  all  know 
by  sight  the  two  fanatical  checker  players,  bent  happily 
over  their  homemade  board  all  the  way  to  town.  At 
Jamaica  they  are  so  absorbed  in  play  that  the  conductor 
— this  is  the  conductor  who  is  so  nervous  about  miss- 
ing a  fare  and  asks  everyone  three  times  if  his  ticket 
has  been  punched — has  to  rout  them  out  to  change  to 
the  Brooklyn  train.  "How's  the  game  this  morning?" 
says  someone.  "Oh,  I  was  just  trimming  him,  but 
they  made  us  change."  However  thick  the  throng, 
these  two  always  manage  to  find  seats  together.  They 
are  still  hard  at  it  when  Atlantic  Avenue  is  reached, 

[1751 


Plum  Pudding 

furiously  playing  the  last  moves  as  the  rest  file  out. 
Then  there  is  the  humorous  news-agent  who  takes 
charge  of  the  smoking  car  between  Jamaica  and  Oyster 
Bay.  There  is  some  mysterious  little  game  that  he  con- 
ducts with  his  clients.  Very  solemnly  he  passes  down 
the  aisle  distributing  rolled-up  strips  of  paper  among 
the  card  players.  By  and  by  it  transpires  that  some 
one  has  won  a  box  of  candy.  Just  how  this  is  done  we 
know  not.  Speaking  of  card  players,  observe  the  gaze 
of  anguish  on  the  outpost.  He  dashes  ahead,  grabs 
two  facing  seats  and  sits  in  one  with  a  face  contorted 
with  anxiety  for  fear  that  the  others  will  be  too  late  to 
join  him.  As  soon  as  a  card  game  is  started  there  are 
always  a  half  dozen  other  men  who  watch  it,  following 
every  play  with  painful  scrutiny.  It  seems  that  watch- 
ing other  people  play  cards  is  the  most  absorbing 
amusement  known  to  the  commuter. 

Then  there  is  the  man  who  carries  a  heavy  bag  packed 
with  books.  A  queer  creature,  this.  Day  by  day  he 
lugs  that  bag  with  him  yet  spends  all  his  time  reading 
the  papers  and  rarely  using  the  books  he  carries.  His 
pipe  always  goes  out  just  as  he  reaches  his  station; 
frantically  he  tries  to  fill  and  light  it  before  the  train 
stops.  Sometimes  he  digs  deeply  into  the  bag  and 
brings  out  a  large  slab  of  chocolate,  which  he  eats  with 
an  air  of  being  slightly  ashamed  of  himself.  The 
oddities  of  this  person  do  not  amuse  us  any  the  less  be- 
cause he  happens  to  be  ourself . 

So  fares  the  commuter:  a  figure  as  international  as 
the  teddy  bear.  He  has  his  own  consolations — of  a 
morning  when  he  climbs  briskly  upward  from  his  dark 

[176] 


Consider  the  Commuter 

tunnel  and  sees  the  sunlight  upon  the  spread  wings  of 
the  Telephone  and  Telegraph  Building's  statue,  and 
moves  again  into  the  stirring  pearl  and  blue  of  New 
York's  lucid  air.  And  at  night,  though  drooping  a  little 
in  the  heat  and  dimness  of  those  Oyster  Bay  smoking 
cars,  he  is  dumped  down  and  set  free.  As  he  climbs 
the  long  hill  and  tunes  his  thoughts  in  order,  the  sky  is 
a  froth  of  stars. 


177 


THE  PERMANENCE  OF  POETRY 

WE  HEARD  a  critic  remark  that  no  great  sonnets 
are  being  written  nowadays.  What  (he  said 
morosely)  is  there  in  the  way  of  a  recent  sonnet  that  is 
worthy  to  take  its  place  in  the  anthologies  of  the  future 
beside  those  of  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  Milton,  Wordsworth, 
Keats,  Mrs.  Browning,  Louise  Guiney,  Rupert  Brooke, 
or  Lizette  Reese?  (These  were  the  names  he  men- 
tioned.) 

This  moves  us  to  ask,  how  can  you  tell?  It  takes 
time  for  any  poem  to  grow  and  ripen  and  find  its  place 
in  the  language.  It  will  be  for  those  of  a  hundred  or 
more  years  hence  to  say  what  are  the  great  poems  of  our 
present  day.  If  a  sonnet  has  the  true  vitality  in  it,  it 
will  gather  association  and  richness  about  it  as  it  traces 

[1781 


The  Permanence  of  Poetry 

its  slender  golden  path  through  the  minds  of  readers. 
It  settles  itself  comfortably  into  the  literary  landscape, 
incorporates  itself  subtly  into  the  unconscious  thought 
of  men,  becomes  corpuscular  in  the  blood  of  the  lan- 
guage. It  comes  down  to  us  in  the  accent  of  those  who 
have  loved  and  quoted  it,  invigorated  by  our  subtle 
sense  of  the  permanent  Tightness  of  its  phrasing  and 
our  knowledge  of  the  pleasure  it  has  given  to  thousands 
of  others.  The  more  it  is  quoted,  the  better  it 
seems. 

All  this  is  a  slow  process  and  an  inscrutable.  No  one 
has  ever  given  us  a  continuous  history  of  any  particu- 
lar poem,  tracing  its  history  and  adventures  after  its 
first  publication — the  places  it  has  been  quoted,  the 
hearts  it  has  rejoiced.  It  could  only  be  done  by  an  in- 
finity of  toil  and  a  prodigal  largesse  to  clipping  bureaus. 
It  would  be  a  fascinating  study,  showing  how  some 
poems  have  fought  for  their  lives  against  the  evapo- 
ration of  Time,  and  how  they  have  come  through,  some- 
times, because  they  were  carried  and  cherished  in  one 
or  two  appreciative  hearts.  But  the  point  to  bear  in 
mind  is,  the  whole  question  of  the  permanence  of  poetry 
is  largely  in  the  hands  of  chance.  If  you  are  interested 
to  observe  the  case  of  some  really  first-class  poetry 
which  has  been  struggling  for  recognition  and  yet  shows, 
so  far,  no  sign  of  breaking  through  into  the  clear  light 
of  lasting  love  and  remembrance,  look  at  the  poems 
of  James  Elroy  Flecker. 

Generally  speaking,  one  law  is  plain:  that  it  is  not 
until  the  poet  himself  and  all  who  knew  him  are  dead, 
and  his  lines  speak  only  with  the  naked  and  impersonal 

[1791 


Plum  Pudding 

appeal  of  ink,  that  his  value  to  the  race  as  a  permanent 
pleasure  can  be  justly  appraised. 

There  is  one  more  point  that  perhaps  is  worth  making. 
It  is  significant  of  human  experience  that  the  race  in- 
stinctively demands,  in  most  of  the  poetry  that  it  cares 
to  take  along  with  it  as  permanent  baggage,  a  certain 
honourable  sobriety  of  mood.  Consider  Mr.  Burton  E. 
Stevenson's  great  "Home  Book  of  Verse,"  that  mag- 
nificent anthology  which  may  be  taken  as  fairly  in- 
dicative of  general  taste  in  these  matters.  In  nearly 
4,000  pages  of  poetry  only  three  or  four  hundred  are 
cynical  or  satirical  in  temper.  Humanity  as  a  whole 
likes  to  make  the  best  of  a  bad  job:  it  grins  somewhat 
ruefully  at  the  bitter  and  the  sardonic;  but  when  it  is 
packing  its  trunk  for  the  next  generation  it  finds  most 
room  for  those  poets  who  have  somehow  contrived  to 
find  beauty  and  not  mockery  in  the  inner  sanctities  of 
human  life  and  passion.  This  thought  comes  to  us  on 
reading  Aldous  Huxley's  brilliant  and  hugely  enter- 
taining book  of  poems  called  "Leda."  There  is  no 
more  brilliant  young  poet  writing  to-day;  his  title  poem 
is  nothing  less  than  extraordinary  in  pagan  and  pictor- 
ial beauty,  but  as  a  whole  the  cynical  and  scoffish  tone 
of  carnal  drollery  which  gives  the  book  its  appeal  to  the 
humorously  inclined  makes  a  very  dubious  sandal  for 
a  poet  planning  a  long-distance  run.  Please  note  that 
we  are  not  taking  sides  in  any  argument :  we  ourself  ad- 
mire Mr.  Huxley's  poems  enormously;  but  we  are  sim- 
ply trying,  clumsily,  to  state  what  seem  to  us  some  of 
the  conditions  attaching  to  the  permanence  of  beauty 
as  arranged  in  words. 

[180] 


The  Permanence  of  Poetry 

It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  you  have  done  your 
possible  when  you  have  read  a  great  poem  once — or 
ten  times.  A  great  poem  is  like  a  briar  pipe — it  dark- 
ens and  mellows  and  sweetens  with  use.  You  fill  it  with 
your  own  glowing  associations  and  glosses,  and  the 
strong  juices  seep  through,  staining  and  gilding  the 
grain  and  fibre  of  the  words. 


[181] 


BOOKS  OF  THE  SEA 

THE  National  Marine  League  asks,  What  are  the  ten 
best  books  of  the  sea?     Without  pondering  very 
deeply  on  the  matter,  and  confining  ourself  to  prose,  we 
would  suggest  the  following  as  our  own  favourites : 

Typhoon,  by  Joseph  Conrad 
The  Nigger  of  the  "Narcissus,"  by  Joseph  Conrad 
The  Mirror  of  the  Sea,  by  Joseph  Conrad 
Captains  Courageous,  by  Rudyard  Kipling 
The  BrassboundeT)  by  David  W.  Bone 

[182] 


Books  of  the  Sea 

Salt  of  the  Sea,  by  Morley  Roberts 

Mr.  Midshipman  Easy,  by  Captain  Marryat 

The  Wreck  of  the  "Grosvenor,"  by  Clark  Russell 

Moby  Dick,  by  Herman  Melville 

An  Ocean  Tramp,  by  William  McFee. 

If  one  is  allowed  to  include  books  that  deal  partially 
with  salt  water,  one  would  have  to  add  "Treasure 
Island,"  "Casuals  of  the  Sea,"  by  McFee,  and  "Old 
Junk,"  by  Tomlinson.  The  kind  of  shallow-water  sea 
tales  that  we  love  to  read  after  supper,  with  our  feet 
on  the  nearest  chair  and  a  decent  supply  of  tobacco 
handy,  are  the  delicious  stories  by  W.  W.  Jacobs. 
Dana's  "Two  Years  Before  the  Mast,"  which  is  spoken 
of  as  a  classic,  we  have  never  read.  We  have  always 
had  a  suspicion  of  it,  we  don't  know  why.  Before  we 
tackle  it  we  shall  re-read  "The  Water  Babies."  We 
have  always  found  a  good  deal  of  innocent  cheer  in  the 
passages  in  John  Woolman's  Journal  describing  his 
voyage  from  Philadelphia  to  London  in  1772.  Friend 
Woolman,  like  the  sturdy  Quaker  that  he  was,  was 
horrified  (when  he  went  to  have  a  look  at  the  ship  Mary 
and  Elizabeth)  to  find  "sundry  sorts  of  carved  work 
and  imagery"  on  that  part  of  the  vessel  where  the 
cabins  were;  and  in  the  cabins  themselves  he  observed 
"some  superfluity  of  workmanship  of  several  sorts." 
This  subjected  his  mind  to  "a  deep  exercise,"  and  he 
decided  that  he  would  have  to  take  passage  in  the  steer- 
age instead  of  the  cabin.  Having  ourself  made  use  of 
the  steerage  aforetime,  both  in  the  Mauretania  and 
humbler  vessels,  we  feel  a  certain  kindred  sympathy 
for  his  experiences.  We  have  always  enjoyed  his  re- 

[1831 


Plum  Pudding 

mark:  "The  wind  now  blew  vehemently,  and  the  sea 
wrought  to  that  degree  that  an  awful  seriousness  pre- 
vailed." 

To  come  to  poetry,  we  suppose  that  the  greatest  sea- 
poet  who  never  ventured  on  anything  more  perilous 
than  a  ferry-boat  was  Walt  Whitman.  Walt,  one  likes 
to  think,  would  have  been  horribly  sea-sick  if  he  had 
ventured  out  beyond  the  harbour  buoy.  A  good  deal  of 
Walt's  tempestuous  uproar  about  the  glories  of  America 
was  undoubtedly  due  to  the  fact  that  he  bad  never  seen 
anything  else.  Speaking  of  Walt  reminds  us  that  one 
book  of  the  sea  that  we  have  never  read  (for  the  best 
of  reasons:  it  has  not  been  written)  might  be  done  by 
Thomas  Mosher,  the  veteran  tippler  of  literary  minims. 
Mr.  Mosher,  we  understand,  "followed"  the  sea  in  his 
youth.  Not  long  ago,  when  Mr.  Mosher  published 
that  exquisite  facsimile  of  the  1855  "Leaves  of  Grass," 
we  asked  him  when  and  how  he  first  came  in  contact 
with  Whitman's  work.  He  said: 

I  don't  suppose  there  was  anything  particularly  in- 
teresting about  my  first  acquaintance  with  Whitman, 
which  at  14  years  of  age  I  made  in  my  old  family  man- 
sion situated  at  Smith's  Corner,  America.  I  had  been 
taking  "The  Galaxy"  from  its  start,  only  a  few  months 
previous  to  the  date  I  mention.  I  can  still  see  myself 
in  the  sitting  room  of  the  old  house.  Smith's  Cor., 
America,  I  will  remind  you,  is  a  portion  of  Biddeford, 
Me.  An  extra  "d"  has  got  into  the  old  English 
name — which,  by  the  way,  only  a  year  later  I  passed 
through  after  a  shipwreck  on  the  Devonshire  coast. 
(That  was  in  1867.)  No  one  ever  told  me  anything 
about  Walt. 

[  184  ] 


Books  of  the  Sea 

These  amateurish  speculations  on  maritime  books 
are  of  no  value  except  for  the  fact  that  they  elicited  an 
interesting  letter  from  an  expert  on  these  matters. 
William  McFee  wrote  us  as  follows: — 

"The  first  thing  I  laid  my  hands  on  this  evening,  while 
hunting  for  some  forgotten  nugget  of  wisdom  in  my 
note-books  filled  with  Mediterranean  brine,  was  that 
list  of  books  for  a  projected  sea  library .  Perpend.  .  .  . 

The  Sea  Farer's  Library 

Tom  Cringle's  Log Michael  Scott 

Two  Years  Before  the  Mast Dana 

Midshipman  Easy Marryat 

Captains  Courageous Kipling 

The  Flying  Cloud Morley  Roberts 

The  Cruise  of  the  Cachalot Frank  T.  Bullen 

Log  of  a  Sea  Waif Frank  T.  Bullen 

The  Salving  of  a  Derelict Maurice  Drake 

The  Grain  Carriers Edward  Noble 

Marooned Clark   Russell 

Typhoon Conrad 

Toilers  of  the  Sea Hugo 

An  Iceland  Fisherman Loti 

The  Sea  Surgeon D'Annunzio 

The  Sea  Hawk Sabatini 

"A  good  many  of  these  need  no  comment.  Attention 
is  drawn  riot  to  the  individual  items,  but  to  the  balance 
of  the  whole.  That  is  the  test  of  a  list.  But  there  is  a 
good  balance,  a  balance  of  power,  and  a  balance  of  mere 
weight  or  prestige.  It  is  the  power  we  are  after  here. 
Regard  for  a  moment  the  way  'Tom  Cringle'  bal- 
ances Dana's  laconic  record  of  facts.  No  power  on 
earth  could  hold  'Torn  Cringle'  to  facts,  with  the  re- 

[185] 


Plum  Pudding 

suit  that  his  story  is  more  truly  a  representation  of  sea 
life  in  the  old  navy  than  a  ton  of  statistics.  He  has  the 
seaman's  mind,  which  Dana  had  not. 

"Then  again  *  Cap  tains  Courageous' and  'The  Fly- 
ing Cloud '  balance  each  other  with  temperamental  ex- 
actitude. Each  is  a  fine  account  of  sea-doings  with  a 
touch  of  fiction  to  keep  the  sailor  reading,  neither  of 
them  in  the  very  highest  class.  'The  Cruise  of  the 
Cachalot'  is  balanced  by  the  'Log  of  a  Sea  Waif,' 
each  in  Bullen's  happier  and  less  evangelical  vein.  I 
was  obliged  to  exclude  'With  Christ  at  Sea,'  not  be- 
cause it  is  religious,  but  because  it  does  not  balance. 
It  would  give  the  whole  list  a  most  pronounced  'list,' 
if  you  will  pardon  the  unpardonable.  ...  I  regret 
this  because  'With  Christ  at  Sea'  has  some  things  in 
it  which  transcend  anything  else  Bullen  ever  wrote. 

"Now  we  come  to  a  couple  of  books  possibly  requiring 
a  little  explanation.  'The  Salving  of  a  Derelict'  is  a 
remarkably  able  story  of  a  man's  reclamation.  I  be- 
lieve Maurice  Drake  won  a  publisher's  prize  with  it  as 
a  first  novel  some  years  ago.  It  was  a  winner  among  the 
apprentices,  I  remember.  'The  Grain  Carriers'  is  a 
grim  story  of  greedy  owners  and  an  unseaworthy  ship 
by  an  ex-master  mariner  whose  'Chains,'  while  not  a 
sea  story,  is  tinged  with  the  glamour  of  South  American 
shipping,  and  is  obviously  a  work  written  under  the 
influence  of  Joseph  Conrad.  'Marooned'  and  'Ty- 
phoon' balance  (only  you  mustn't  be  too  critical)  as 
examples  of  the  old  and  new  methods  of  telling  a  sea 
story. 

'"The  Sea  Surgeon'  is  one  of  a  collection  of  stories 
about  the  Pescarese,  which  D'Annunzio  wrote  years 
ago.  They  are  utterly  unlike  '  II  Fuoco '  and  the  other 
absurd  tales  on  which  translators  waste  their  time.  In 
passing  one  is  permitted  to  complain  of  the  persistent 
ill-fortune  Italian  novelists  suffer  at  the  hands  of  their 
English  translators. 

[1861 


Books  of  the  Sea 

"Assuming,  however,  that  our  seafarer  wants  a  book 
or  two  of  what  is  euphemistically  termed  *  non-fiction,' 
here  are  a  few  which  will  do  him  no  harm : 

"Southey's  'Life  of  Nelson/ 

"  'The  Influence  of  Sea  Power  Upon  History/Mahan. 

"Admiral  Lord  Beresford's  'Memoirs.' 

"The  Diary  of  Samuel  Pepys,  F.  R.  S.,  Secretary  to 
the  Admiralty  in  the  Reign  of  Charles  II  and  James  II. 
It  is  most  grievously  overlooked  that  Samuel  was  the 
first  to  draft  a  naval  Rate  Book,  which  is  a  sort  of  in- 
dexed lexicon  of  everything  one  needs  'for  fighting  and 
sea-going  efficiency.'  And  it  is  a  pleasure,  chastened 
by  occasional  fits  of  ill-temper,  to  discover  that  the 
present  British  Naval  Rate  Book  hath  in  it  divers 
synonyms  coeval  with  Samuel  and  his  merry  monarchs. 
As  when  the  present  writer  tried  to  order  some  hammer- 
handles  and  discovered  after  much  tribulation  that 
the  correct  naval  equivalent  for  such  is  'ash-helms.' 
Whereupon  he  toilfully  rewrote  his  requisitions  'and 
so  to  bed.' 

"Another  suggestion  I  might  make  is  a  volume  to  be 
compiled,  containing  the  following  chapters: 

I.  "Landsmen  Admirals,"  Generals  Blake  and 
Monk. 

II.  "A  Dutch  Triumvirate,"  Van  Tromp,  De 
Witt  and  De  Ruyter. 

III.  "Napoleon  as  a  Sea  Tactician." 

IV.  "Decatur  and  the  Mediterranean  Pirates." 
V.  "The  Chesapeake  and  the  Shannon." 

VI.     "The  Spanish-American  Naval  Actions." 
VII.     "The  Russo-Japanese  Naval  Actions." 
VIII.     "The  Turko-Italian  Naval  Actions." 
Conclusion.     "  Short  Biography  of  Josephus  Daniels." 
"Only  deep-water  sailors  would  be  able  to  take  this 
suggested  library  to  sea  with  them,  because  a  sailor 
only  reads  at  sea.     When  the  landward  breeze  brings 

[187] 


Plum  Pudding 

the  odours  of  alien  lands  through  the  open  scuttle  one 
closes  the  book,  and  if  one  is  a  normal  and  rational 
kind  of  chap  and  the  quarantine  regulations  permit, 
goes  ashore." 

Gruesome  as  anything  in  any  seafaring  pirate  yarn 
is  Trelawny's  description  (in  "Recollections  of  the 
Last  Days  of  Shelley  and  Byron")  of  the  burning  of 
Shelley's  body  on  the  seashore  near  Via  Reggio.  The 
other  day,  in  company  with  two  like-minded  innocents, 
we  visited  a  bookshop  on  John  Street  where  we  found 
three  battered  copies  of  this  great  book,  and  each 
bought  one,  with  shouts  of  joy.  The  following  day, 
still  having  the  book  with  us,  we  dropped  in  to  see  the 
learned  and  hospitable  Dr.  Rosenbach  at  his  new  and 
magnificent  thesaurus  at  273  Madison  Avenue.  We 
showed  him  the  book,  because  every  time  one  shows 
the  doctor  a  book  he  can  startle  you  by  countering  with 
its  original  manuscript  or  something  of  that  sort.  We 
said  something  about  Shelley  and  Trelawny,  in  the 
hope  of  starting  him  off.  He  smiled  gently  and  drew 
out  a  volume  from  a  shelf.  It  was  the  copy  of  "Pro- 
metheus Unbound"  that  Shelley  had  given  Trelawny 
in  July,  1822,  with  an  inscription.  As  the  poet  was 
drowned  on  July  8,  1822,  it  probably  was  the  last  book 
he  ever  gave  away. 

One  wonders  what  may  have  become  of  the  log  of 
the  American  clipper  that  Shelley  and  Trelawny  visited 
in  the  harbour  of  Leghorn  shortly  before  Shelley's  death. 
Shelley  had  said  something  in  praise  of  George  Washing- 
ton, to  which  the  sturdy  Yankee  skipper  replied: 
"Stranger,  truer  words  were  never  spoken;  there  is  dry 

[188] 


Books  of  the  Sea 

rot  in  all  the  main  timbers  of  the  Old  World,  and  none 
of  you  will  do  any  good  till  you  are  docked,  refitted, 
and  annexed  to  the  New.  You  must  log  that  song  you 
sang;  there  ain't  many  Britishers  that  will  say  as  much 
of  the  man  that  whipped  them;  so  just  set  these  lines 
down  in  the  log!" 

Whereupon  Shelley  autographed  the  skipper's  log  for 
him,  with  some  sentiments  presumably  gratifying  to 
American  pride,  and  drank  some  "cool  peach  brandy." 
It  was  his  last  drink. 

We  ourself,  just  as  much  as  Shelley,  enjoy  visiting 
ships,  and  have  had  some  surprising  adventures  in  so 
doing.  We  remember  very  clearly  our  first  call  upon 
William  McFee,  when  he  was  First  Assistant  En- 
gineer in  S.  S.  Turrialba.  But  getting  aboard  vessels 
is  a  much  more  complicated  and  diplomatic  task  than 
it  was  in  Shelley's  day.  Even  when  armed  with  Mr. 
McFee's  autographed  card,  it  was  by  no  means  easy. 
We  went  dutifully  up  to  the  office  of  the  United  Fruit 
Company  at  Pier  9,  to  apply  for  a  pass,  and  were  sur- 
veyed with  grim  suspicion.  Why,  we  asked  gently,  in 
these  peaceful  times  is  it  so  difficult  to  visit  a  friend  who 
happens  to  be  in  a  ship?  Prohibition,  said  the  candid 
clerk,  and  a  whole  province  of  human  guile  was  thereby 
made  plain  to  our  shrinking  mind.  Mortals  incline  read- 
ily to  sin,  it  seems,  and  apparently  evil  and  base  men  will 
even  go  so  far  as  to  pretend  a  friendship  with  those  who 
go  down  to  wet  territory  in  ships,  simply  for  the  sake  of 
— well,  we  cannot  bring  ourself  to  mention  it.  "How 
do  you  know  Mr.  McFee  wants  to  see  you?"  we  were 
asked.  Luckily  we  had  Mac's  card  to  prove  it. 

[1891 


Plum  Pudding 

We  had  long  wanted  to  see  Mr.  McFee  in  his  sea- 
going quarters,  where  he  writes  his  books  and  essays 
(so  finely  flavoured  with  a  rich  ironical  skepticism 
as  to  the  virtues  of  folk  who  live  on  shore).  Never 
was  a  literary  sanctum  less  like  the  pretentious  studios 
of  the  imitation  litterateurs.  In  a  small  cabin  stood 
our  friend,  in  his  working  dungarees  (if  that  is  what 
they  are  called)  talking  briskly  with  the  Chief  and  an- 
other engineer.  The  conversation,  in  which  we  were 
immediately  engulfed,  was  so  vivacious  that  we  had 
small  chance  to  examine  the  surroundings  as  we  would 
have  liked  to.  But  save  for  the  typewriter  on  the  desk 
and  a  few  books  in  a  rack,  there  was  nothing  to  suggest 
literature.  "Plutarch's  Lives,"  we  noticed — a  favour- 
ite of  Mac's  since  boyhood;  Frank  Harris's  "The 
Bomb"  (which,  however,  the  Chief  insisted  belonged 
to  him),  E.  S.  Martin's  "Windfalls  of  Observation," 
and  some  engineering  works.  We  envied  Mac  the 
little  reading  lamp  at  the  head  of  his  bunk. 

We  wish  some  of  the  soft-handed  literary  people  who 
bleat  about  only  being  able  to  write  in  carefully  purged 
and  decorated  surroundings  could  have  a  look  at  that 
stateroom.  In  just  such  compartments  Mr.  McFee 
has  written  for  years,  and  expected  to  finish  that  night 
(in  the  two  hours  each  day  that  he  is  able  to  devote  to 
writing)  his  tale,  "Captain  Macedoine's  Daughter." 
As  we  talked  there  was  a  constant  procession  of  in- 
comers, most  of  them  seeming  to  the  opaque  obser- 
vation of  the  layman  to  be  firemen  discussing  matters 
of  overtime.  On  the  desk  lay  an  amusing  memo- 
randum, which  the  Chief  referred  to  jocularly  as  one 
[190] 


Books  of  the  Sea 

of  Mac's  "works,"  anent  some  problem  of  whether 
the  donkey  man  was  due  certain  overtime  on  a  Sunday 
when  the  Turrialba  lay  in  Hampton  Roads  waiting 
for  coal.  On  the  cabin  door  was  a  carefully  typed 
list  marked  in  Mr.  McFee's  hand  "Work  to  Do."  It 
began  something  like  this: 

Main  Engine  Pump  Link  Brasses 

Fill  Up  Main  Engine  Feed  Pump  and  Bilge  Rams 

Open  and  Scale  After  Port  Boiler 

Main  Circulator  Impeller  to  Examine 

Hydrokineter  Valve  on  Centre  Boiler  to  be  Rejointed 

The  delightful  thing  about  Mr.  McFee  is  that  he  can 
turn  from  these  things,  which  he  knows  and  loves,  to 
talk  about  literary  problems,  and  can  out-talk  most 
literary  critics  at  their  own  game. 

He  took  us  through  his  shining  engines,  showing  us 
some  of  the  beauty  spots — the  Weir  pumps  and  the  re- 
frigerating machinery  and  the  thrust-blocks  (we  hope 
we  have  these  right),  unconsciously  inflicting  upon  us 
something  of  the  pain  it  gives  the  bungling  jack  of 
several  trades  when  he  sees  a  man  who  is  so  fine  a  master 
not  merely  of  one,  but  of  two — two  seemingly  diverse, 
but  in  which  the  spirit  of  faith  and  service  are  the  same. 
"" She's  a  bonny  ship,"  he  said,  and  his  face  was  lit  with 
sincerity  as  he  said  it.  Then  he  washed  his  hands  and 
changed  into  shore  clothes  and  we  went  up  to  Frank's, 
where  we  had  pork  and  beans  and  talked  about  Sir 
Thomas  Browne. 


191 


FALLACIOUS   MEDITATIONS   ON   CRITICISM 


THERE  are  never,  at  any  time  and  place,  more  than 
a  few  literary  critics  of  genuine  incision,  taste,  and 
instinct;  and  these  qualities,  rare  enough  in  themselves, 
are  further  debilitated,  in  many  cases,  by  excessive  gen- 
iality or  indigestion.  The  ideal  literary  critic  should 
be  guarded  as  carefully  as  a  delicate  thermal  instrument 
at  the  Weather  Bureau;  his  meals,  friendships,  under- 
wear, and  bank  account  should  all  be  supervised  by 
experts  and  advisedly  maintained  at  a  temperate  mean. 
In  the  Almost  Perfect  State  (so  many  phases  of  which 
have  been  deliciously  delineated  by  Mr.  Marquis)  a 
critic  seen  to  become  over-exhilarated  at  the  dining 
table  or  to  address  any  author  by  his  first  name  would 

[192] 


Fallacious  Meditations  on  Criticism 

promptly  be  haled  from  the  room  by  a  commissionaire 
lest  his  intellectual  acuity  become  blunted  by  emotion. 

The  unfortunate  habit  of  critics  being  also  human 
beings  has  done  a  great  deal  to  impair  their  value  to  the 
public.  For  other  human  beings  we  all  nourish  a  secret 
disrespect.  And  therefore  it  is  well  that  the  world 
should  be  reminded  now  and  then  of  the  dignity  and 
purity  of  the  critic's  function.  The  critic's  duty  is  not 
merely  to  tabulate  literary  material  according  to  some 
convenient  scale  of  proved  niceties;  but  to  discern  the 
ratio  existing  in  any  given  work  between  possibility 
and  performance;  between  the  standard  the  author 
might  justly  have  been  expected  to  achieve  and  the 
standard  he  actually  attained.  There  are  hierarchies 
and  lower  archies.  A  pint  pot,  full  (it  is  no  new  ob- 
servation), is  just  as  full  as  a  bathtub  full.  And  the 
first  duty  of  the  critic  is  to  determine  and  make  plain 
to  the  reader  the  frame  of  mind  in  which  the  author 
approached  his  task. 

Just  as  a  ray  of  sunshine  across  a  room  reveals,  in 
air  that  seemed  clear,  innumerable  motes  of  golden 
dancing  dust  and  filament,  so  the  bright  beam  of  a  great 
critic  shows  us  the  unsuspected  floating  atoms  of 
temperament  in  the  mind  of  a  great  writer.  The  pop- 
ular understanding  of  the  word  criticize  is  to  find 
fault,  to  pettifog.  As  usual,  the  popular  mind  is  only 
partly  right.  The  true  critic  is  the  tender  curator  and 
warden  of  all  that  is  worthy  in  letters.  His  function  is 
sacramental,  like  the  sweeping  of  a  hearth.  He  keeps 
the  hearth  clean  and  nourishes  the  fire.  It  is  a  holy 
fire,  for  its  fuel  is  men's  hearts. 
[1931 


Plum  Pudding 

It  seems  to  us  probable  that  under  present  conditions 
the  cause  of  literature  is  more  likely  to  suffer  from  in- 
judicious and  excessive  praise  rather  than  from  churlish 
and  savage  criticism.  It  seems  to  us  (and  we  say  this 
with  certain  misgivings  as  to  enthusiasms  of  our  own) 
that  there  are  many  reviewers  whose  honest  zeal  for  the 
discovering  of  masterpieces  is  so  keen  that  they  are 
likely  to  burst  into  superlatives  half  a  dozen  times  a 
year  and  hail  as  a  flaming  genius  some  perfectly  worthy 
creature,  who  might,  if  he  were  given  a  little  stiff  dis- 
cipline, develop  into  a  writer  of  best-readers  rather 
than  best-sellers.  Too  resounding  praise  is  often  more 
damning  than  faint  praise.  The  writer  who  has  any 
honest  intentions  is  more  likely  to  be  helped  by  a  little 
judicious  acid  now  and  then  than  by  cartloads  of  honey. 
Let  us  be  candid  and  personal.  When  someone  in  The 
New  Republic  spoke  of  some  essays  of  our  own  as 
"blowzy"  we  were  moved  for  a  few  moments  to  an 
honest  self  -scrutiny  and  repentance.  Were  we  really 
blowzy,  we  said  to  our  self?  We  did  not  know  ex- 
actly what  this  meant,  and  there  was  no  dictionary 
handy.  But  the  word  gave  us  a  picture  of  a  fat,  ruddy 
beggar-wench  trudging  through  wind  and  rain,  prob- 
ably on  the  way  to  a  tavern;  and  we  determined,  with 
modest  sincerity,  to  be  less  like  that  in  future. 

The  good  old  profession  of  criticism  tends,  in  the 
hands  of  the  younger  generation,  toward  too  fulsome 
ejaculations  of  hurrahs  and  hyperboles.  It  is  a  fine 
thing,  of  course,  that  new  talent  should  so  swiftly  win 
its  recognition;  yet  we  think  we  are  not  wholly  wrong 
in  believing  that  many  a  delicate  and  promising  writer 

[  194  ] 


Fallacious  Meditations  on  Criticism 

has  been  hurried  into  third-rate  work,  into  women's 
magazine  serials  and  cheap  sordid  sensationalism,  by  a 
hasty  overcapitalization  of  the  reviewer's  shouts.  For 
our  own  part,  we  do  not  feel  any  too  sure  of  our  ability 
to  recognize  really  great  work  when  we  first  see  it.  We 
have  often  wondered,  if  we  had  been  journalizing  in 
1855  when  "Leaves  of  Grass"  appeared,  would  we  have 
been  able  to  see  what  it  meant,  or  wouldn't  we  have 
been  more  likely  to  fill  our  column  with  japeries  at  the 
expense  of  Walt's  obvious  absurdities,  missing  all  the 
finer  grain?  It  took  a  man  like  Emerson  to  see  what 
Walt  was  up  to. 

There  were  many  who  didn't.  Henry  James,  for  in- 
stance, wrote  a  review  of  "Drum  Taps"  in  the  Nation, 
November  16,  1865.  In  the  lusty  heyday  and  assur- 
ance of  twenty-two  years,  he  laid  the  birch  on  smartly. 
It  is  just  a  little  saddening  to  find  that  even  so  clear- 
sighted an  observer  as  Henry  James  could  not  see 
through  the  chaotic  form  of  Whitman  to  the  great 
vision  and  throbbing  music  that  seem  so  plain  to  us 
to-day.  Whitman  himself,  writing  about  "Drum 
Taps"  before  its  publication,  said,  "Its  passion  has  the 
indispensable  merit  that  though  to  the  ordinary  reader 
let  loose  with  wildest  abandon,  the  true  artist  can  see 
that  it  is  yet  under  control."  With  this,  evidently, 
the  young  Henry  James  did  not  agree.  He  wrote: 

It  has  been  a  melancholy  task  to  read  this  book;  and 
it  is  a  still  more  melancholy  one  to  write  about  it. 
Perhaps  since  the  day  of  Mr.  Tupper's  "Philosophy" 
there  has  been  no  more  difficult  reading  of  the  poetic 
sort.  It  exhibits  the  effort  of  an  essentially  prosaic 

[195] 


Plum  Pudding 

mind  to  lift  itself,  by  a  prolonged  muscular  strain,  into 
poetry.  Like  hundreds  of  other  good  patriots,  Mr. 
Walt  Whitman  has  imagined  that  a  certain  amount  of 
violent  sympathy  with  the  great  deeds  and  sufferings 
of  our  soldiers,  and  of  admiration  for  our  national  en- 
ergy, together  with  a  ready  command  of  picturesque 
language,  are  sufficient  inspiration  for  a  poet.  .  .  . 
But  he  is  not  a  poet  who  merely  reiterates  these  plain 
facts  ore  rotundo.  He  only  sings  them  worthily  who 
views  them  from  a  height.  .  .  .  Mr.  Whitman  is 
very  fond  of  blowing  his  own  trumpet,  and  he  has  made 
very  explicit  claims  for  his  book The  fre- 
quent capitals  are  the  only  marks  of  verse  in  Mr.  Whit- 
man's writing.  There  is,  fortunately,  but  one  attempt 
at  rhyme.  .  .  .  Each  line  starts  off  by  itself,  in 
resolute  independence  of  its  companions,  without  a 
visible  goal  ...  it  begins  like  verse  and  turns 
out  to  be  arrant  prose.  It  is  more  like  Mr.  Tupper's 
proverbs  than  anything  we  have  met.  .  .  .  No 
triumph,  however  small,  is  won  but  through  the  ex- 
ercise of  art,  and  this  volume  is  an  offence  against  art. 
.  .  .  We  look  in  vain  through  the  book  for  a  single 
idea.  We  find  nothing  but  flashy  imitations  of  ideas. 
We  find  a  medley  of  extravagances  and  commonplaces. 

We  do  not  know  whether  H.  J.  ever  recanted  this 
very  youthful  disposal  of  old  Walt.  The  only  import- 
ance of  it  at  this  moment  seems  to  us  this:  that  ap- 
preciation of  all  kinds  of  art  is  so  tenderly  interwoven 
with  inherited  respect  for  the  traditional  forms  of  ex- 
pression by  which  they  are  conveyed  that  a  new  and 
surprising  vehicle  quite  unfits  most  observers  for  any 
reasonable  assessment  of  the  passenger. 

As  for  Walt  himself,  he  was  quite  unabashed  by  this 
or  any  other  onslaught.  He  was  not  gleg  at  argument, 
[196] 


Fallacious  Meditations  on  Criticism 

and  probably  rolled  up  the  issue  of  the  Nation  in  his 
pocket  and  went  down  to  Coney  Island  to  lie  on  the  sand 
and  muse  (but  no,  we  forget,  it  was  November !) .  In  the 
same  issue  of  the  Nation  he  doubtless  read,  in  the  "Lit- 
erary Notes,"  that  "Poems  Relating  to  the  American 
Revolution,"  by  Philip  Freneau,  was  "in  press  under  the 
scholarly  editing  of  Evart  A.  Duyckinck  to  form  a  com- 
plete presentment  of  the  genius  of  an  author  whose 
influence  in  the  affairs  of  his  time  would  alone  impart  a 
lasting  value  to  his  works."  At  this  Walt  smiled  gently 
to  himself,  wondered  how  soon  "  When  Lilacs  Last  in 
the  Dooryard  Bloomed"  would  get  into  the  anthol- 
ogies, and  "sped  to  the  certainties  suitable  to  him." 

II 

These  miscellaneous  thoughts  on  the  fallibility  of 
critics  were  suggested  to  us  by  finding  some  old  bound 
volumes  of  the  Edinburgh  Review  on  a  bookstall, 
five  cents  each.  In  the  issue  for  November,  1814,  we 
read  with  relish  what  the  Review  had  to  say  about 
Wordsworth's  "Excursion."  These  are  a  few  excerpts: 

This  will  never  do.  .  .  .  The  case  of  Mr.  Words- 
worth, we  perceive,  is  now  manifestly  hopeless ;  and  we 
give  him  up  as  altogether  incurable,  and  beyond  the 
power  of  criticism  .  .  .  making  up  our  minds, 
though  with  the  most  sincere  pain  and  reluctance,  to 
consider  him  as  finally  lost  to  the  good  cause  of  po- 
etry. .  .  .  The  volume  before  us,  if  we  were  to  de- 
scribe it  very  shortly,  we  should  characterize  as  a  tissue 
of  moral  and  devotional  ravings,  in  which  innumerable 
changes  are  rung  upon  a  few  very  simple  and  familiar 
ideas. 

[197] 


Plum  Pudding 

The  world  of  readers  has  not  ratified  Jeffrey's  savage 
comments  on  "The  Excursion,"  for  (to  reckon  only  by 
the  purse)  any  frequenter  of  old  bookshops  can  pick  up 
that  original  issue  of  the  Edinburgh  Review  for  a  few 
cents,  while  the  other  day  we  saw  a  first  edition  of  the 
maligned  "Excursion"  sold  for  thirty  dollars.  A  hun- 
dred years  ago  it  was  the  critic's  pleasure  to  drub  au- 
thors with  cruel  and  unnecessary  vigour.  But  we  think 
that  almost  equal  harm  can  be  done  by  the  modern 
method  of  hailing  a  new  "genius"  every  three  weeks. 

For  example,  there  is  something  subtly  troublesome 
to  us  in  the  remark  that  Sinclair  Lewis  made  about 
Evelyn  Scott's  novel,  "The  Narrow  House."  The 
publishers  have  used  it  as  an  advertising  slogan,  and 
the  words  have  somehow  buzzed  their  way  into  our 
head: 

"Salute  to  Evelyn  Scott :  she  belongs,  she  understands, 
she  is  definitely  an  artist." 

We  have  been  going  about  our  daily  affairs,  climbing 
subway  stairs,  dodging  motor  trucks,  ordering  platters 
of  stewed  rhubarb,  with  that  refrain  recurring  and  re- 
curring. Salute  to  Evelyn  Scott !  (we  say  to  ourself  as 
we  stand  in  line  at  the  bank,  waiting  to  cash  a  small 
check).  She  belongs,  she  understands.  And  then,  as 
we  go  away,  pensively  counting  the  money  (they've 
got  some  clean  Ones  down  at  our  bank,  by  the  way;  we 
don't  know  whether  the  larger  denominations  are  clean 
or  not,  we  haven't  seen  any  since  Christmas),  we  find 
ourself  mumbling,  She  is  definitely  an  artist. 

We  wonder  why  that  pronouncement  annoys  us  so. 

[198] 


Fallacious  Meditations  on  Criticism 

We  haven't  read  all  Mrs.  Scott's  book  yet,  and  doubt 
our  strength  to  do  so.  It  is  a  riot  of  morbid  surgery 
by  a  fumbling  scalpel:  great  powers  of  observation  are 
put  to  grotesque  misuse.  It  is  crammed  with  faithful 
particulars  neither  relevant  nor  interesting.  (Who 
sees  so  little  as  he  who  looks  through  a  microscope?) 
At  first  we  thought,  hopefully,  that  it  was  a  bit  of  ex- 
cellent spoof;  then,  regretfully,  we  began  to  realize  that 
not  only  the  publishers  but  even  the  author  take  it 
seriously.  It  feels  as  though  it  had  been  written  by 
one  of  the  new  school  of  Chicago  realists.  It  is  dis- 
heartening that  so  influential  a  person  as  Mr.  Lewis 
should  be  fooled  by  this  sort  of  thing. 

So  there  is  something  intensely  irritating  to  us  (al- 
though we  admire  Mr.  Lewis)  in  that  "She  belongs,  she 
understands,  she  is  definitely  an  artist."  In  the  first 
place,  that  use  of  the  word  artist  as  referring  to  a  writer 
always  gives  us  qualms  unless  used  with  great  care. 
Then  again,  She  belongs  somehow  seems  to  intimate 
that  there  is  a  registered  clique  of  authors,  preferably 
those  who  come  down  pretty  heavily  upon  the  dis- 
agreeable facts  of  life  and  catalogue  them  with  glut- 
tonous care,  which  group  is  the  only  one  that  counts. 
Now  we  are  strong  for  disagreeable  facts.  We  know  a 
great  many.  But  somehow  we  cannot  shake  ourself 
loose  from  the  instinctive  conviction  that  imagination 
is  the  without-which-no thing  of  the  art  of  fiction. 
Miss  Stella  Benson  is  one  who  is  not  unobservant  of  dis- 
agreeables, but  when  she  writes  she  can  convey  her  sat- 
ire in  flashing,  fantastic  absurdity,  in  a  heavenly  chiding 
so  delicate  and  subtle  that  the  victim  hardly  knows  he 

[199] 


Plum  Pudding 

is  being  chidden.  The  photographic  facsimile  of  life 
always  seems  to  us  the  lesser  art,  because  it  is  so  plainly 
the  easier  course. 

We  fear  we  are  not  acute  enough  to  explain  just  why 
it  is  that  Mr.  Lewis's  salute  to  Mrs.  Scott  bothers  us 
so.  But  it  does  bother  us  a  good  deal.  We  have  nour- 
ished ourself ,  in  the  main,  upon  the  work  of  two  modern 
writers:  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  and  Joseph  Conrad; 
we  like  to  apply  as  a  test  such  theories  as  we  have 
been  able  to  glean  from  those  writers.  Faulty  and 
erring  as  we  are,  we  always  rise  from  Mr.  Conrad's 
books  purged  and,  for  the  moment,  strengthened.  Ap- 
parent in  him  are  that  manly  and  honourable  virtue, 
that  strict  saline  truth  and  scrupulous  regard  for  life, 
that  liberation  from  cant,  which  seem  to  be  inbred  in 
those  who  have  suffered  the  exacting  discipline  of  the 
hostile  sea.  Certainly  Conrad  cannot  be  called  a 
writer  who  has  neglected  the  tragic  side  of  things.  Yet 
in  his  "Notes  on  Life  and  Letters,"  we  find  this: 

What  one  feels  so  hopelessly  barren  in  declared  pes- 
simism is  just  its  arrogance.  It  seems  as  if  the  dis- 
covery made  by  many  men  at  various  times  that  there 
is  much  evil  in  the  world  were  a  source  of  proud  and 
unholy  joy  unto  some  of  the  modern  writers.  That 
frame  of  mind  is  not  the  proper  one  in  which  to  approach 
seriously  the  art  of  fiction.  .  .  .  To  be  hopeful  in 
an  artistic  sense  it  is  not  necessary  to  think  that  the 
world  is  good.  It  is  enough  to  believe  that  there  is  no 
impossibility  of  its  being  made  so.  .  .  .  I  would 
ask  that  in  his  dealings  with  mankind  he  [the  writer] 
should  be  capable  of  giving  a  tender  recognition  to 
their  obscure  virtues.  I  would  not  have  him  impa- 

[200] 


Fallacious  Meditations  on  Criticism 

tient  with  their  small  failings  and  scornful  of  their 
errors. 

We  fear  that  our  mild  protest  is  rather  mixed  and 
muddled.  But  what  we  darkly  feel  is  this:  that  no 
author  "belongs,"  or  "understands,"  or  is  "definitely 
an  artist"  who  merely  makes  the  phantoms  of  his  im- 
agination paltry  or  ridiculous.  They  may  be  paltry, 
but  they  must  also  be  pitiable;  they  may  be  ridiculous, 
but  they  must  also  be  tragic.  Many  authors  have 
fallen  from  the  sublime  to  the  ridiculous;  but,  as  Mr. 
Chesterton  magnificently  said,  in  order  to  make  that 
descent  they  must  first  reach  the  sublime. 


[201] 


LETTING  OUT  THE  FURNACE 

THE  prudent  commuter  (and  all  commuters  are 
prudent,  for  the  others  are  soon  weeded  out  by  the 
rigours  of  that  way  of  life)  keeps  the  furnace  going  until 
early  May  in  these  latitudes — assuming  that  there  are 
small  children  in  the  house.  None  of  those  April  hot 
waves  can  fool  him;  he  knows  that,  with  cunning  man- 
agement, two  or  three  shovelfuls  of  coal  a  day  will  nurse 
the  fire  along,  and  there  it  is  in  case  of  a  sudden  chilly 
squall.  But  when  at  last  he  lets  the  fire  die,  and  after  its 
six  months  of  constant  and  honourable  service  the  old 
boiler  grows  cold,  the  kindly  glow  fades  and  sinks  down- 
ward out  of  sight  under  a  crust  of  gray  clinkers,  our  friend 
muses  tenderly  in  his  cellar,  sitting  on  a  packing  case. 


Letting  Out  the  Furnace 

He  thinks,  first,  how  odd  it  is  that  when  he  said  to 
himself,  "We  might  as  well  let  the  fire  go  out,"  it  kept 
on  sturdily  burning,  without  attention  or  fuel,  for  a 
day  and  a  half;  whereas  if  he  had,  earlier  in  the  season, 
neglected  it  even  for  a  few  hours,  all  would  have  been 
cold  and  silent.  He  remembers,  for  instance,  the  tragic 
evening  with  the  mercury  around  zero,  when,  having 
(after  supper)  arranged  everything  at  full  blast  and  all 
radiators  comfortably  sizzling,  he  lay  down  on  his 
couch  to  read  Leonard  Merrick,  intending  to  give  all 
hands  a  warm  house  for  the  night.  Very  well;  but 
when  he  woke  up  around  2  A.  M.  and  heard  the  tenor 
winds  singing  through  the  woodland,  how  anxiously 
he  stumbled  down  the  cellar  stairs,  fearing  the  worst. 
His  fears  were  justified.  There,  on  top  of  the  thick 
bed  of  silvery  ashes,  lay  the  last  pallid  rose  of  fire. 
For  as  every  pyrophil  has  noted,  when  the  draught  is 
left  on,  the  fire  flees  upward,  leaving  its  final  glow  at 
the  top;  but  when  all  draughts  are  shut  off,  it  sinkst 
downward,  shyly  hiding  in  the  heart  of  the  mass. 

So  he  stood,  still  drowsily  aghast,  while  Gissing 
(the  synthetic  dog)  frolicked  merrily  about  his  unre- 
sponsive shins,  deeming  this  just  one  more  of  those 
surprising  entertainments  arranged  for  his  delight. 

Now,  on  such  an  occasion  the  experienced  com- 
muter makes  the  best  of  a  bad  job,  knowing  there  is 
little  to  be  gained  by  trying  to  cherish  and  succour  a 
feeble  remnant  of  fire.  He  will  manfully  jettison  the 
whole  business,  filling  the  cellar  with  the  crash  of  shunt- 
ing ashes  and  the  clatter  of  splitting  kindling.  But 
this  pitiable  creature  still  thought  that  mayhap  he 

[203] 


Plum  Pudding 

could,  by  sedulous  care  and  coaxing,  revive  the  dying 
spark.  With  such  black  arts  as  were  available  he 
wrestled  with  the  despondent  glim.  During  this  period 
of  guilty  and  furtive  strife  he  went  quietly  upstairs, 
and  a  voice  spoke  up  from  slumber.  "Isn't  the  house 
very  cold?"  it  said. 

"Is  it?"  said  this  wretched  creature,  with  great  simu- 
lation of  surprise.  "Seems  very  comfortable  to  me." 

"Well,  I  think  you'd  better  send  up  some  more  heat," 
said  this  voice,  in  the  tone  of  one  accustomed  to  com- 
mand. 

"Right  away,"  said  the  panic-stricken  combustion 
engineer,  and  returned  to  his  cellar,  wondering  whether 
he  was  suspected.  How  is  it,  he  wondered,  that  ladies 
know  instinctively,  even  when  vested  in  several  layers 
of  blankets,  if  anything  is  wrong  with  the  furnace? 
Another  of  the  mysteries,  said  he,  grimly,  to  the  syn- 
thetic dog.  By  this  time  he  knew  full  well  (it  was  3 
A.  M.)  that  there  was  naught  for  it  but  to  decant  the 
grateful  of  cinders  and  set  to  work  on  a  new  fire. 

Such  memories  throng  in  the  mind  of  the  commuter 
as  he  surveys  the  dark  form  of  his  furnace,  standing 
cold  and  dusty  in  the  warm  spring  weather,  and  he  cleans 
and  drains  it  for  the  summer  vacation.  He  remembers 
the  lusty  shout  of  winter  winds,  the  clean  and  silver 
nakedness  of  January  weather,  the  shining  glow  of  the 
golden  coals,  the  comfortable  rustling  and  chuckle  of 
the  boiler  when  alive  with  a  strong  urgency  of  steam, 
the  soft  thud  and  click  of  the  pipes  when  the  pressure 
was  rising  before  breakfast.  And  he  meditates  that 
these  matters,  though  often  the  cause  of  grumbles  at 

[204] 


Letting  Out  the  Furnace 

the  time,  were  a  part  of  that  satisfying,  reality  that 
makes  life  in  the  outposts  a  more  honest  thing  than  the 
artificial  convenience  of  great  apartment  houses.  The 
commuter,  no  less  than  the  seaman,  has  fidelities  of  his 
own;  and  faithful,  strict  obedience  to  hard  necessary 
formulae  favours  the  combined  humility  and  self-respect 
that  makes  human  virtue.  The  commuter  is  often 
a  figure  both  tragic  and  absurd;  but  he  has  a  rubric  and 
discipline  of  his  own.  And  when  you  see  him  gro- 
tesquely hasting  for  the  5:27  train,  his  inner  impulse 
may  be  no  less  honourable  than  that  of  the  ship's  officer 
ascending  the  bridge  for  his  watch  under  a  dark  speckle 
of  open  sky. 


[80S] 


BY  THE  FIREPLACE 

WE  WERE  contemplating  our  fireplace,  in  which 
some  of  the  hearth-bricks  are  rather  irregularly 
disposed;  and  we  said  to  ourself,  perhaps  the  brick- 
layer who  built  this  noble  fireplace  worked  like  Ben 
Jonson,  with  a  trowel  in  one  hand  and  a  copy  of  Horace 
in  the  other.  That  suggested  to  us  that  we  had  not  read 
any  Ben  Jonson  for  a  very  long  time:  so  we  turned  to 
"Every  Man  in  His  Humour"  and  "The  Alchemist." 
Part  of  Jonson's  notice  "To  the  Reader"  preceding 
"The  Alchemist"  struck  us  as  equally  valid  as  regards 
poetry  to-day: 


Thou  wert  never  more  fair  in  the  way  to  be  cozened, 
than  in  this  age,  in  poetry;  wherein  .  .  .  antics  to 
run  away  from  nature,  and  be  afraid  of  her,  is  the  only 

[2061 


By  the  Fireplace 

point  of  art  that  tickles  the  spectators  .  .  .  For 
they  commend  writers,  as  they  do  fencers  or  wrestlers; 
who  if  they  come  in  robustuously,  and  put  for  it  with 
a  great  deal  of  violence,  are  received  for  the  braver  fel- 
lows. ...  I  deny  not,  but  that  these  men,  who 
always  seek  to  do  more  than  enough,  may  some  time 
happen  on  some  thing  that  is  good,  and  great ;  but  very 
seldom  ...  I  give  thee  this  warning,  that  there  is 
a  great  difference  between  those,  that  utter  all  they  can, 
however  unfitly;  and  those  that  use  election  and  a  mean. 
For  it  is  only  the  disease  of  the  unskilful,  to  think  rude 
things  greater  than  polished;  or  scattered  more  numer- 
ous than  composed. 

Ben  Jonson's  perpetual  allusions  to  tobacco  al- 
ways remind  one  of  the  odd  circumstance  that  of 
two  such  cronies  as  he  and  Will  Shakespeare,  one 
should  have  mentioned  tobacco  continually,  the 
other  not  at  all.  Undoubtedly  Ben  smoked  a  par- 
ticularly foul  old  pipe  and  was  forever  talking  about 
it,  spouting  his  rank  strangling  "Cuban  ebolition" 
across  the  table;  and  Will,  probably  rather  nice 
in  his  personal  habits,  grew  disgusted  with  the 
habit. 

At  any  rate,  Shakespeare's  silence  on  the  subject  has 
always  been  a  grief  to  smokers.  At  a  time  when  we 
were  interested  in  that  famous  and  innocent  way  of 
wasting  time,  trying  to  discover  ciphers  in  Shakespeare's 
sonnets,  we  spent  long  cryptogrammarian  evenings 
seeking  to  prove  some  anagram  or  rebus  by  which  the 
Bard  could  be  supposed  to  have  concealed  a  mention 
of  tobacco.  But  the  only  lurking  secret  we  ever  dis- 
covered seemed  to  suggest  that  the  sonnets  had  been 

[207] 


Plum  Pudding 

written  by  an  ex -President  of  the  United  States.    Ob- 
serve the  131st  sonnet: 

lou  art  as  tyrannous,  so  as  thou  art 

those  whose  beauties  proudly  make  them  cruel; 
for  well  thou  know'st  to  my  dear  doting  heart 
Tnou  art  the  fairest  and  most  precious  jewel. 

And  evidently  Shakespeare  intended  to  begin 
the  51st  sonnet  with  the  same  acrostic;  but,  with 
Elizabethan  laxity,  misspelled  Mr.  Taft's  name  as 
TOFT. 

Reading  Elizabethan  literature  always  encourages 
one  to  proceed,  even  though  decorously,  with  the  use  of 
the  pun.  Such  screams  of  mirth  as  (we  doubt  not) 
greeted  one  of  Ben  Jonson's  simpletons  when  he  spoke 
of  Roger  Bacon  as  Rasher  Bacon  (we  can  hear  them 
laughing,  can't  you?)  are  highly  fortifying. 

But  we  began  by  quoting  Ben  Jonson  on  poetry. 
The  passage  sent  us  to  the  bookcase  to  look  up  the 
"axioms"  about  poetry  stated  by  another  who  was  also, 
in  spirit  at  least,  an  habitue  of  The  Mermaid.  In  that 
famous  letter  from  Keats  to  his  publisher  and  friend 
John  Taylor,  February  27,  1818,  there  is  a  fine  fluent 
outburst  on  the  subject.  All  Keats  lovers  know  these 
"axioms"  already,  but  they  cannot  be  quoted  too  often; 
and  we  copy  them  down  with  additional  pleasure  be- 
cause not  long  ago,  by  the  kindness  of  the  two  librari- 
ans who  watch  over  one  of  the  most  marvellous  private 
collections  in  the  world — Mr.  J.  P.  Morgan's — we  saw 
the  original  letter  itself: — 

[2081 


By  the  Fireplace 

1st.  I  think  poetry  should  surprise  by  a  fine  excess, 
and  not  by  singularity.  It  should  strike  the  reader  as 
a  wording  of  his  own  highest  thoughts,  and  appear  al- 
most a  remembrance. 

2d.  Its  touches  of  beauty  should  never  be  half-way, 
thereby  making  the  reader  breathless,  instead  of  con- 
tent. The  rise,  the  progress,  the  setting  of  Imagery 
should,  like  the  sun,  come  natural  to  him,  shine  over 
him,  and  set  soberly,  although  in  magnificence,  leaving 
him  in  the  luxury  of  twilight.  But  it  is  easier  to  think 
what  poetry  should  be  than  to  write  it — and  this 
leads  me  to 

Another  axiom — That  if  poetry  comes  not  as  natur- 
ally as  the  leaves  to  a  tree,  it  had  better  not  come  at  all. 

Some  people  can  always  find  things  to  complain 
about.  We  have  seen  protests  because  the  house  in 
Rome  where  Keats  died  is  used  as  a  steamship  office. 
We  think  it  is  rather  appropriate.  No  man's  mind  ever 
set  sail  upon  wider  oceans  of  imagination.  To  para- 
phrase Emily  Dickinson: 

Night  after  night  his  purple  traffic 
Strews  the  landing  with  opal  bales; 

Merchantmen  poise  upon  horizons, 
Dip,  and  vanish  with  fairy  sails. 

Another  pleasing  fact  is  that  while  he  was  a  medical 
student  Keats  lived  in  Bird-in-Hand  Court,  Cheapside 
— best  known  nowadays  as  the  home  of  Simpson's, 
that  magnificent  chophouse.  Who  else,  in  modern 
times,  came  so  close  to  holding  unruffled  in  his  hand  the 
shy  wild  bird  of  Poetry? 


209 


A  CITY  NOTE-BOOK 

WELL,  now  let  us  see  in  what  respect  we  are 
richer  to-day  than  we  were  yesterday. 

Coming  down  Fifth  Avenue  on  top  of  a  bus,  we  saw 
a  man  absorbed  in  a  book.  Ha,  we  thought,  here  is 
our  chance  to  see  how  bus  reading  compares  to  subway 
reading !  After  some  manceuvering,  we  managed  to  get 
the  seat  behind  the  victim.  The  volume  was  "Every 
Man  a  King,"  by  Orison  Swett  Marden,  and  the 
uncrowned  monarch  reading  it  was  busy  with  the  thir- 
teenth chapter,  to  wit:  "Thoughts  Radiate  as  Influ- 
ence." We  did  a  little  radiating  of  our  own,  and  it 
seemed  to  reach  him,  for  presently  he  grew  uneasy,  put 
the  volume  carefully  away  in  a  brief -case,  and  (as  far  as  we 
could  see)  struck  out  toward  his  kingdom,  which  appar- 
ently lay  on  the  north  shore  of  Forty-second  Street. 

We  felt  then  that  we  would  recuperate  by  glancing  at 

[210] 


A  City  Note-book 

a  little  literature.  So  we  made  our  way  toward  the 
newly  enlarged  shrine  of  James  F.  Drake  on  Fortieth 
Street.  Here  we  encountered  our  friends  the  two 
Messrs.  Drake,  junior,  and  complimented  them  on 
their  thews  and  sinews,  these  two  gentlemen  having 
recently,  unaided,  succeeded  in  moving  a  half -ton 
safe,  filled  with  the  treasures  of  Elizabethan  literature, 
into  the  new  sanctum.  Here,  where  formerly  sped 
the  nimble  fingers  of  M.  Tappe's  young  ladies,  busy  with 
the  compilation  of  engaging  bonnets  for  the  fair,  now 
stand  upon  wine-dark  shelves  the  rich  gold  and  amber 
of  fine  bindings.  We  were  moved  by  this  sight.  We 
said  in  our  heart,  we  will  erect  a  small  madrigal  upon 
this  theme,  entitled:  "Song  Upon  Certain  Song- 
birds of  the  Elizabethan  Age  Now  Garnishing  the 
Chamber  Erstwhile  Bright  With  the  Stuffed  Plumage 
of  the  Milliner."  To  the  Messrs.  Drake  we  men- 
tioned the  interesting  letter  of  Mr.  J.  Acton  Lomax  in 
yesterday's  Tribune,  which  called  attention  to  the 
fact  that  the  poem  at  the  end  of  "Through  the  Look- 
ing Glass"  is  an  acrostic  giving  the  name  of  the  origi- 
nal Alice — viz.,  Alice  Pleasance  Liddell.  In  return 
for  which  we  were  shown  a  copy  of  the  first  edition 
of  "Alice  in  Wonderland."  Here,  too,  we  dallied  for 
some  time  over  a  first  edition  of  Dr.  Johnson's  Dic- 
tionary, and  were  pleased  to  learn  that  the  great  doctor 
was  no  more  infallible  in  proofreading  than  the  rest  of 
us,  one  of  our  hosts  pointing  out  to  us  a  curious  error 
by  which  some  words  beginning  in  COV  had  slipped  in 
ahead  of  words  beginning  in  COU. 

****** 
[211] 


Plum  Pudding 

AT  NOON  to-day  we  climbed  on  a  Riverside  Drive  bus 
at  Seventy-ninth  Street  and  rode  in  the  mellow  gold  of 
autumn  up  to  Broadway  and  168th.  Serene,  gilded 
weather;  sunshine  as  soft  and  tawny  as  candlelight, 
genial  at  midday  as  the  glow  of  an  open  fire  in  spite  of 
the  sharpness  of  the  early  morning.  Battleships  lay 
in  the  river  with  rippling  flags.  Men  in  flannels  were 
playing  tennis  on  the  courts  below  Grant's  Tomb; 
everywhere  was  a  convincing  appearance  of  comfort 
and  prosperity.  The  beauty  of  the  children,  the  good 
clothing  of  everybody,  canes  swinging  on  the  pave- 
ments, cheerful  faces  untroubled  by  thought,  the  warm 
benevolence  of  sunlight,  bronzing  trees  along  Riverside 
Park,  a  man  reading  a  book  on  the  summit  of  that 
rounded  knoll  of  rock  near  Eighty-fourth  Street  which 
children  call  "Mount  Tom" — everything  was  so  bright 
in  life  and  vigour  that  the  sentence  seems  to  need  no  verb. 
Joan  of  Arc,  poised  on  horseback  against  her  screen  of 
dark  cedars,  held  her  sword  clearly  against  the  pale 
sky.  Amazingly  sure  and  strong  and  established  seem 
the  rich  fagades  of  Riverside  Drive  apartment  houses, 
and  the  landlords  were  rolling  in  limousines  up  to  Clare- 
mont  to  have  lunch.  One  small  apartment  house, 
near  Eighty-third  or  thereabouts,  has  been  renamed 
the  Chateau-Thierry. 

After  crossing  the  long  bridge  above  Claremont  and 
the  deep  ravine  where  ships  and  ferryboats  and  coal 
stations  abound,  the  bus  crosses  on  135th  Street  to 
Broadway.  At  153d,  the  beautiful  cemetery  of  Trin- 
ity Parish,  leafy  paths  lying  peaceful  in  the  strong  glow. 
At  166th  Street  is  an  open  area  now  called  Mitchel 

[212] 


A  City  Note-book 

Square,  with  an  outcrop  of  rock  polished  by  the  rear- 
ward breeks  of  many  sliding  urchins.  Some  children 
were  playing  on  that  small  summit  with  a  toy  parachute 
made  of  light  paper  and  a  pebble  attached  by  threads. 
On  168th  Street  alongside  the  big  armoury  of  the 
Twenty-second  Engineers  boys  were  playing  base- 
ball, with  a  rubber  ball,  pitching  it  so  that  the  batter 
received  it  on  the  bounce  and  struck  it  with  his  fist. 
According  to  the  score  chalked  on  the  pavement  the 
"Bronx  Browns"  and  the  "Haven  Athletics"  were 
just  finishing  a  rousing  contest,  in  which  the  former 
were  victors,  1 — 0.  Haven  Avenue,  near  by,  is  a  happy 
little  street  perched  high  above  the  river.  A  small 
terraced  garden  with  fading  flowers  looks  across  the 
Hudson  to  the  woody  Palisades.  Modest  apartment 
houses  are  built  high  on  enormous  buttresses,  over  the 
steep  scarp  of  the  hillside.  Through  cellar  windows 
coal  was  visible,  piled  high  in  the  bins;  children  were 
trooping  home  for  dinner;  a  fine  taint  of  frying  onions 
hung  in  the  shining  air.  Everywhere  in  that  open, 
half -suburban,  comfortable  region  was  a  feeling  of  sane, 
established  life.  An  old  man  with  a  white  beard  was 
greeted  by  two  urchins,  who  ran  up  and  kissed  him 
heartily  as  he  beamed  upon  them.  Grandpa,  one 
supposes !  Plenty  of  signs  indicating  small  apartments 
to  rent,  four  and  five  rooms.  And  down  that  upper 
slant  of  Broadway,  as  the  bus  bumbles  past  rows  of 
neat  prosperous-seeming  shops,  one  feels  the  great  tug 
and  pulling  current  of  life  that  flows  down  the  channel, 
the  strange  energy  of  the  huge  city  lying  below.  The 
tide  was  momentarily  stilled,  but  soon  to  resume  action. 

[2131 


Plum  Pudding 

There  was  a  magic  touch  apparent,  like  the  stillness  of 
a  palace  in  a  fairy  tale,  bewitched  into  waiting  silence. 


SOMETIMES  on  our  way  to  the  office  in  the  morning 
we  stop  in  front  of  a  jeweller's  window  near  Maiden 
Lane  and  watch  a  neat  little  elderly  gentleman  daintily 
setting  out  his  employer's  gauds  and  trinkets  for  the 
day.  We  like  to  see  him  brood  cheerfully  over  the  dis- 
position of  his  small  amber-coloured  velvet  mats,  and 
the  arrangement  of  the  rings,  vanity  cases,  necklaces, 
and  precious  stones.  They  twinkle  in  the  morning 
light,  and  he  leans  downward  in  the  window,  innocently 
displaying  the  widening  parting  on  his  pink  scalp.  He 
purses  his  lips  in  a  silent  whistle  as  he  cons  his  shining 
trifles  and  varies  his  plan  of  display  every  day. 

Now  a  modern  realist  (we  have  a  painful  suspicion) 
if  he  were  describing  this  pleasant  man  would  deal 
rather  roughly  with  him.  You  know  exactly  how  it 
would  be  done.  He  would  be  a  weary,  saddened, 
shabby  figure :  his  conscientious  attention  to  the  jewels 
in  his  care  would  be  construed  as  the  painful  and  creak- 
ing routine  of  a  victim  of  commercial  greed;  a  bitter 
irony  would  be  distilled  from  the  contrast  of  his  own 
modest  station  in  life  and  the  huge  value  of  the  lucid 
crystals  and  carbons  under  his  hands.  His  hands — ah, 
the  realist  would  angrily  see  some  brutal  pathos  or  un- 
conscious naughtiness  in  the  crook  of  the  old  mottled 
fingers.  How  that  widening  parting  in  the  gray  head 
would  be  gloated  upon.  It  would  be  very  easy  to  do, 
and  it  would  be  (if  we  are  any  judge)  wholly  false. 
[2141 


A  City  Note-book 

For  we  have  watched  the  little  old  gentleman  many 
times,  and  we  have  quite  an  affection  for  him.  We 
see  him  as  one  perfectly  happy  in  the  tidy  and  careful 
round  of  his  tasks ;  and  when  his  tenderly  brushed  gray 
poll  leans  above  his  treasures,  and  he  gently  devises 
new  patterns  by  which  the  emeralds  or  the  gold  ciga- 
rette cases  will  catch  the  slant  of  9  o'clock  sunlight,  we 
seem  to  see  one  who  is  enjoying  his  own  placid  concep- 
tion of  beauty,  and  who  is  not  a  figure  of  pity  or  re- 
proach, but  one  of  decent  honour  and  excellent  fidelity. 


ONE  of  our  colleagues,  a  lusty  genial  in  respect  of 
tobacco,  has  told  us  of  a  magnificent  way  to  remove  an 
evil  and  noisome  taste  from  an  old  pipe  that  hath  been 
smoked  overlong.  He  says,  clean  the  bowl  carefully 
(not  removing  the  cake)  and  wash  tenderly  in  fair, 
warm  water.  Then,  he  says,  take  a  teaspoonful  of  the 
finest  vatted  Scotch  whiskey  (or,  if  the  pipe  be  of  ex- 
ceeding size,  a  tablespoonful  of  the  same)  and  pour  it 
delicately  into  the  bowl.  Apply  a  lighted  match,  and 
let  the  liquor  burn  itself  out.  It  will  do  so,  he 
avouches,  with  a  gentle  blue  flame  of  great  beauty  and 
serenity.  The  action  of  this  burning  elixir,  he  main- 
tains, operates  to  sizzle  and  purge  away  all  impurity 
from  the  antique  incrustation  in  the  bowl.  After  let- 
ting the  pipe  cool,  and  then  filling  it  with  a  favourite 
blend  of  mingled  Virginia,  Perique,  and  Latakia,  our 
friend  asserts  that  he  is  blessed  with  a  cool,  saporous, 
and  enchanting  fumigation  which  is  so  fragrant  that 
even  his  wife  has  remarked  upon  it  in  terms  compli- 

[  215  ] 


Plum  Pudding 

mentary.  Our  friend  says  (but  we  fear  he  draws  the 
longbow  nigh  unto  fracture)  that  the  success  of  this 
method  may  be  tested  so:  if  one  lives,  as  he  does,  in 
the  upward  stories  of  a  tall  apartment  house,  one  should 
take  the  pipe  so  cleansed  to  the  window-sill,  and,  smok- 
ing it  heartily,  lean  outward  over  the  sill.  On  a  clear, 
still,  blue  evening,  the  air  being  not  too  gusty,  the 
vapours  will  disperse  and  eddy  over  the  street;  and  he 
maintains  with  great  zeal  that  passersby  ten  tiers  be- 
low will  very  soon  look  upward  from  the  pavement, 
sniffingly,  to  discern  the  source  of  such  admirable 
fumes.  He  has  even  known  them,  he  announces,  to 
hail  him  from  the  street,  in  tones  of  eager  inquiry,  to 
learn  what  kind  of  tobacco  he  is  smoking. 

All  this  we  have  duly  meditated  and  find  ourselves 
considerably  stirred.  Now  there  is  only  one  thing 
that  stands  between  ourself  and  such  an  experiment. 


THERE  are  some  who  hold  by  the  theory  that  on 
visiting  a  restaurant  it  is  well  to  pick  out  a  table  that  is 
already  cleared  rather  than  one  still  bearing  the  debris 
of  a  previous  patron's  meal.  We  offer  convincing 
proof  to  the  contrary. 

Rambling,  vacant  of  mind  and  guileless  of  intent,  in 
a  certain  quiet  portion  of  the  city — and  it  is  no  use  for 
you,  O  client,  to  ask  where,  for  our  secrecy  is  firm  as 
granite — we  came  upon  an  eating  house  and  turned  in- 
ward. There  were  tables  spread  with  snowy  cloths, 
immaculate;  there  were  also  tables  littered  with  dishes. 
We  chose  one  of  the  latter,  for  a  waiter  was  removing 

[216] 


A  City  Note-book 

the  plates,  and  we  thought  that  by  sitting  there  we 
would  get  prompter  service.  We  sat  down  and  our 
eye  fell  upon  a  large  china  cup  that  had  been  used  by 
the  preceding  luncher.  In  the  bottom  of  that  cup  was 
a  little  pool  of  dark  dregs,  a  rich  purple  colour,  most 
agreeable  to  gaze  upon.  Happy  possibilities  were 
opened  to  our  mind.  Like  the  fabled  Captain  X,  we 
had  a  Big  Idea.  We  made  no  outcry,  nor  did  we  show 
our  emotion,  but  when  the  waiter  asked  for  our  order 
we  said,  calmly:  "Sausages  and  some  of  the  red  wine." 
He  was  equally  calm  and  uttered  no  comment. 

Soon  he  came  back  (having  conferred,  as  we  could 
see  out  of  the  wing  of  our  eye)  with  his  boss.  "What 
was  it  you  ordered?  "  he  said. 

"Sausages,"  we  replied,  urbanely,  "and  some  of  the 
red  wine." 

"I  don't  remember  having  served  you  before,"  he 
said.  "I  can't  give  you  anything  like  that." 

We  saw  that  we  must  win  his  confidence  and  we 
thought  rapidly.  "It's  perfectly  all  right,"  we  said. 
"Mr.  Bennett"  (we  said,  seizing  the  first  name  that 
came  into  our  head),  "who  comes  here  every  day,  told 
me  about  it.  You  know  Mr.  Bennett;  he  works  over 
on  Forty-second  Street  and  comes  here  right  along." 

Again  he  departed,  but  returned  anon  with  smiling 
visage.  "If  you're  a  friend  of  Mr.  Bennett's,"  he  said, 
"it's  all  right.  You  know,  we  have  to  be  careful." 

"Quite  right,"  we  said;  "be  wary."  And  we  laid 
hand  firmly  on  the  fine  hemorrhage  of  the  grape. 

A  little  later  in  the  adventure,  when  we  were  asked 
what  dessert  we  would  have,  we  found  stewed  rhubarb 

[2171 


Plum  Pudding 

on  the  menu,  and  very  fine  stewed  rhubarb  it  was; 
wherefore  we  say  that  our  time  was  not  ill-spent  and  we 
shall  keep  the  secret  to  ourself . 

But  we  can't  help  feeling  grateful  to  Mr.  Bennett, 
whoever  he  is. 


OCCASIONALLY  (but  not  often)  in  the  exciting  plexus 
of  our  affairs  (conducted,  as  we  try  to  persuade  our- 
self,  with  so  judicious  a  jointure  of  caution  and  hi- 
larity) we  find  it  necessary  to  remain  in  town  for  dinner. 
Then,  and  particularly  in  spring  evenings,  we  are  moved 
and  exhilarated  by  that  spectacle  that  never  loses  its  en- 
chantment, the  golden  beauty  and  glamour  of  down- 
town New  York  after  the  homeward  ebb  has  left  the 
streets  quiet  and  lonely.  By  six  o'clock  in  a  May 
sunset  the  office  is  a  cloister  of  delicious  peace  and  soli- 
tude. Let  us  suppose  (oh,  a  case  merely  hypothetic) 
that  you  have  got  to  attend  a  dinner  somewhere  in  the 
Forties,  say  at  half -past  seven;  and  it  is  requisite  that 
evening  clothes  should  be  worn.  You  have  brought 
them  to  the  office,  modestly  hidden,  in  a  bag;  and  in 
that  almost  unbelievable  privacy,  toward  half-past 
six,  you  have  an  enjoyable  half  hour  of  luxurious  amuse- 
ment and  contemplation.  The  office,  one  repeats,  is 
completely  stripped  of  tenants — save  perhaps  an  oc- 
casional grumbling  sortie  by  the  veteran  janitor.  So 
all  its  resources  are  open  for  you  to  use  as  boudoir. 
Now,  in  an  office  situated  like  this  there  is,  at  sunset 
time,  a  variety  of  scenic  richness  to  be  contemplated. 
From  the  President's  office  (putting  on  one's  hard- 

[218] 


A  City  Note-book 

boiled  shirt)  one  can  look  down  upon  St.  Paul's  church- 
yard, lying  a  pool  of  pale  blue  shadow  in  the  rising  dusk. 
From  the  City  Room  (inserting  studs)  one  sees  the 
river  sheeted  with  light.  From  the  office  of  the 
Literary  Editor  (lacing  up  one's  shoes)  one  may  study 
the  wild  pinnacle  of  Woolworth,  faintly  superfused 
with  a  brightness  of  gold  and  pink.  From  the  office  of 
one  of  our  dramatic  critics  the  view  is  negligible  (being 
but  a  hardy  brick  wall),  but  the  critic,  debonair  crea- 
ture, has  a  small  mirror  of  his  own,  so  there  one  man- 
ages the  ticklish  business  of  the  cravat.  And  from 
our  own  kennel,  where  are  transacted  the  last  touches 
(transfer  of  pipe,  tobacco,  matches,  Long  Island  rail- 
road timetable,  commutation  ticket,  etc.,  to  the  other 
pockets)  there  is  a  heavenly  purview  of  those  tall  cliffs 
of  lower  Broadway,  nobly  terraced  into  the  soft,  trans- 
lucent sky.  In  that  exquisite  clarity  and  sharpness  of 
New  York's  evening  light  are  a  loveliness  and  a  gal- 
lantry hardly  to  be  endured.  At  seven  o'clock  of  a 
May  evening  it  is  poetry  unspeakable.  O  magnificent 
city  (one  says),  there  will  come  a  day  when  others  will 
worship  and  celebrate  your  mystery;  and  when  not  one 
of  them  will  know  or  care  how  much  I  loved  you.  But 
these  words,  obscure  and  perishable,  I  leave  you  as  a 
testimony  that  I  also  understood. 

She  cannot  be  merely  the  cruel  Babel  they  like  to 
describe  her :  the  sunset  light  would  not  gild  her  so  ten- 
derly. 

*  *  *  *  * 

IT  WAS  a  great  relief  to  us  yesterday  evening  to 
see  a  man  reading  a  book  in  the  subway.  We  have 

[219] 


Plum  Pudding 

undergone  so  many  embarrassments  trying  to  make  out 
the  titles  of  the  books  the  ladies  read,  without  running 
afoul  of  the  Traveller's  Aid  Society,  that  we  heaved  a 
sigh  of  relief  and  proceeded  to  stalk  our  quarry  with  a 
light  heart.  Let  us  explain  that  on  a  crowded  train 
it  is  not  such  an  easy  task.  You  see  your  victim  at 
the  other  end  of  the  car.  First  you  have  to  buffet  your 
way  until  you  get  next  to  him.  Then,  just  as  you  think 
you  are  in  a  position  to  do  a  little  careful  snooping,  he 
innocently  shifts  the  book  to  the  other  hand.  This 
means  you  have  got  to  navigate,  somehow,  toward 
the  hang-handle  on  the  other  side  of  him.  Very  well. 
By  the  time  the  train  gets  to  Bowling  Green  we  have 
seen  that  it  is  a  fattish  book,  bound  in  green  cloth,  and 
the  author's  name  begins  with  FRAN.  That  doesn't 
help  much.  As  the  train  roars  under  the  river  you 
manage,  by  leanings  and  twistings,  to  see  the  pub- 
lisher's name — in  this  case,  Longmans.  At  Borough 
Hall  a  number  of  passengers  get  out,  and  the  hunted 
reader  sits  down.  Ten  to  one  he  will  hold  the  book 
in  such  a  way  that  you  cannot  see  the  title.  At  Nevins 
Street  you  get  a  seat  beside  him.  At  Atlantic  Avenue, 
as  he  is  getting  off,  you  propose  your  head  over  his 
shoulder  in  the  jam  on  the  stairs  and  see  what  you  are 
after.  "Lychgate  Hall,"  by  M.  E.  Francis.  And  in 
this  case,  success  left  us  none  the  wiser. 

Atlantic  Avenue,  by  the  way,  always  seems  to  us 
an  ideal  place  for  the  beginning  of  a  detective  story. 
(Speaking  of  that,  a  very  jolly  article  in  this  month's 
Bookman,  called  "How  Old  Is  Sherlock  Holmes?" 
has  revived  our  old  ambition  to  own  a  complete  set  of 

[220] 


A  City  Note-book 

all  the  Sherlock  Holmes  tales,  and  we  are  going  to  set 
about  scouring  the  town  for  them).  Every  time  we 
pass  through  the  Atlantic  Avenue  maelstrom,  which 
is  twelve  times  a  week,  we  see,  as  plain  as  print,  the 
beginning  of  two  magazine  tales. 

One  begins  as  the  passengers  are  streaming  through 
the  gate  toward  the  5 :27  train.  There  is  a  very  beauti- 
ful damsel  who  always  sits  on  the  left-hand  side  of  the 
next  to  last  car,  by  an  open  window.  On  her  plump 
and  comely  white  hand,  which  holds  the  latest  issue 
of  a  motion  picture  magazine,  is  a  sparkling  diamond 
ring.  Suddenly  all  the  lights  in  the  train  go  out. 
Through  the  open  window  comes  a  brutal  grasp  which 
wrenches  the  bauble  from  her  finger.  There  are 
screams,  etc.,  etc.  When  the  lights  go  on  again,  of 
course  there  is  no  sign  of  the  criminal.  Five  minutes 
later,  Mr.  Geoffrey  Dartmouth,  enjoying  a  chocolate 
ice  cream  soda  in  the  little  soft-drink  alcove  at  the  cor- 
ner of  the  station,  is  astonished  to  find  a  gold  ring, 
the  stone  missing,  at  the  bottom  of  his  paper  soda 
container. 

The  second  story  begins  on  the  Atlantic  Avenue 
platform  of  the  Lexington  Avenue  subway.  It  is  9 
A.  M.,  and  a  crowded  train  is  pulling  out.  Just  before 
the  train  leaves  a  young  man  steps  off  one  of  the  cars, 
leaving  behind  him  (though  not  at  once  noticed)  a  rat- 
tan suitcase.  This  young  man  disappears  in  the  usual 
fashion,  viz.,  by  mingling  with  the  crowd.  When  the 
train  gets  to  the  end  of  the  run  the  unclaimed  suitcase  is 
opened,  and  found  to  contain — continued  on  page  186. 

***** 
[221] 


Plum  Pudding 

EVERY  now  and  then  we  take  a  stroll  up  Irving  Place. 
It  is  changing  slowly,  but  it  still  has  much  of  the  flavour 
that  Arthur  Maurice  had  in  mind  when  he  christened 
it  "the  heart  of  O.  Henry  land."  Number  55,  the 
solid,  bleached  brownstone  house  where  O.  Henry  once 
lived,  is  still  there:  it  seems  to  be  some  sort  of  ec- 
clesiastical rendezvous,  if  one  may  judge  by  the  letters 
Co  H.  A.  on  the  screen  and  the  pointed  carving  of  the 
doorway.  Number  53,  next  door,  always  interests  us 
greatly:  the  windows  give  a  glimpse  of  the  most  ex- 
traordinary number  of  cages  of  canaries. 

The  old  German  theatre  seems  to  have  changed  its 
language:  the  boards  speak  now  in  Yiddish.  The  chi- 
ropractor and  psycho-analyst  has  invaded  the  Place, 
as  may  be  seen  by  a  sign  on  the  eastern  side.  O.  Henry 
would  surely  have  told  a  yarn  about  him  if  he  had  been 
there  fifteen  years  ago.  There  are  still  quite  a  number 
of  the  old  brown  houses,  with  their  iron  railings  and 
little  patches  of  grass.  The  chocolate  factory  still  dif- 
fuses its  pleasant  candied  whiff.  At  noontime  the 
street  is  full  of  the  high-spirited  pupils  of  the  Washing- 
ton Irving  High  School.  As  for  the  Irving  house  it- 
self, it  is  getting  a  new  coat  of  paint.  The  big  corset 
works,  we  dare  say,  has  come  since  O.  Henry's  time. 
We  had  quite  an  adventure  there  once.  We  can't  re- 
member how  it  came  about,  but  for  some  reason  or 
other  we  went  to  that  building  to  see  the  chief  engineer. 
All  we  can  remember  about  it  was  that  he  had  been  at 
sea  at  one  time,  and  we  went  to  see  him  on  some  mari- 
time errand.  We  found  that  he  and  his  family  lived 
in  a  comfortable  apartment  on  the  roof  of  the  factory, 


A  City  Note-book 

and  we  remember  making  our  way,  with  a  good  many 
blushes,  through  several  hundred  or  thousand  young 
ladies  who  were  industriously  working  away  at  their 
employer's  business  and  who  seemed  to  us  to  be  gig- 
gling more  than  necessary.  After  a  good  deal  of  hunt- 
ing we  found  our  way  to  a  secret  stair  and  reached 
our  seafaring  engineer  of  the  corset  factory  in  his  eyrie, 
where  (we  remember)  there  were  oil  paintings  of  ships 
on  the  walls  and  his  children  played  about  on  the  roof 
as  though  on  the  deck  of  a  vessel. 

Irving  Place  is  also  very  rich  hi  interesting  little 
shops — laundries,  tailors,  carpenters,  stationers,  and  a 
pleasant  bookshop.  It  is  a  haunt  of  hand-organ  men. 
The  cool  tavern  at  the  corner  of  Eighteenth,  where 
Con  Delaney  tended  the  bar  in  the  days  when  O.  Henry 
visited  it,  is  there  still.  All  along  the  little  byway  is  a 
calm,  genteel,  domestic  mood,  in  spite  of  the  encroach- 
ments of  factories  and  apartment  houses.  There  are 
window  boxes  with  flowers,  and  a  sort  of  dim  suffusion 
of  conscious  literary  feeling.  One  has  a  suspicion  that 
in  all  those  upper  rooms  are  people  writing  short  stories. 
"Want  to  see  a  freak?"  asks  the  young  man  in  the 
bookshop  as  we  are  looking  over  his  counters.  We  do, 
of  course,  and  follow  his  animated  gesture.  Across  the 
street  comes  a  plump  young  woman,  in  a  very  short 
skirt  of  a  violent  blue,  with  a  thick  mane  of  bobbed 
hair,  carrying  her  hat  in  her  hand.  She  looks  rather 
comfortable  and  seemly  to  us,  but  something  about 
her  infuriates  the  bookseller.  He  is  quite  Freudian 
hi  his  indignation  that  any  young  woman  should  habit 
herself  so.  We  wonder  what  the  psycho-analyst  a  few 

[223] 


Plum  Pudding 

blocks  below  would  say  about  it.  And  walking  a  few 
paces  further,  one  comes  upon  the  green  twitter,  the 
tended  walks  and  pink  geranium  beds  of  Gramercy 

Park. 

*  *  *  *  * 

THERE  is  no  time  when  we  need  spiritual  support 
so  much  as  when  we  are  having  our  hair  cut,  for  indeed 
it  is  the  only  time  when  we  are  ever  thoroughly  and 
entirely  Bored.  But  having  found  a  good-natured 
barber  who  said  he  would  not  mind  our  reading  a  book 
while  he  was  shearing,  we  went  through  with  it.  The 
ideal  book  to  read  at  such  a  time  (we  offer  you  this 
advice,  brave  friends)  is  the  "Tao"  of  Lao-Tse,  that 
ancient  and  admirable  Chinese  sage.  (D wight  God- 
dard's  translation  is  very  agreeable.)  "The  Tao,"  as  of 
course  you  know,  is  generally  translated  The  Way,  i.  e., 
the  Way  of  Life  of  the  Reasonable  Man. 

Lao-Tse,  we  assert,  is  the  ideal  author  to  read  while 
the  barber  is  at  his  business.  He  answers  every  inquiry 
that  will  be  made,  and  all  you  have  to  do  is  hold  the  book 
up  and  point  to  your  favourite  marked  passages. 

When  the  barber  says,  genially,  "Well,  have  you 
done  your  Christmas  shopping  yet?"  we  raise  the  book 
and  point  to  this  maxim : 

Taciturnity  is  natural  to  man. 

When  he  says,  "How  about  a  nice  little  shampoo  this 
morning?"  we  are  prompt  to  indicate: 

The  wise  man  attends  to  the  inner  significance  of 
things  and  does  not  concern  himself  with  outward  ap- 
pearances. 

[224] 


A  City  Note-book 

When,  as  we  sit  in  the  chair,  we  see  (in  the  mirror  be- 
fore us)  the  lovely  reflection  of  the  beautiful  manicure 
lady,  and  she  arches  her  eyebrows  at  us  to  convey  the 
intimation  that  we  ought  to  have  our  hands  attended 
to,  old  Lao-Tse  is  ready  with  the  answer.  We  reassure 
ourself  with  his  remark: 

Though  he  be  surrounded  with  sights  that  are  magnifi- 
cent, the  wise  man  will  remain  calm  and  unconcerned. 

When  the  shine  boy  offers  to  burnish  our  shoes,  we  call 
his  attention  to: 

He  who  closes  his  mouth  and  shuts  his  sense  gates 
will  be  free  from  trouble  to  the  end  of  life. 

When  the  barber  suggests  that  if  we  were  now  to  have 
a  liberal  douche  of  bay  rum  sprayed  over  our  poll  it 
would  be  a  glittering  consummation  of  his  task,  we  show 
him  the  words : 

//  one  tries  to  improve  a  thing,  he  mars  it. 

And  when  (finally)  the  irritated  tonsor  suggests  that 
if  we  don't  wait  so  long  next  time  before  getting  our 
hair  cut  we  will  not  be  humiliated  by  our  condition,  we 
exhibit  Lao-Tse's  aphorism: 

The  wise  man  is  inaccessible  to  favour  or  hate;  he 
cannot  be  reached  by  profit  or  injury;  he  cannot  be  hon- 
oured or  humiliated. 

"It's  very  easy,"  says  the  barber  as  we  pay  our  check; 
"just  drop  in  here  once  a  month  and  we'll  fix  you  up." 
And  we  point  to: 

[225] 


Plum  Pudding 

The  wise  man  lives  in  the  world,  but  he  lives  cau- 
tiously, dealing  with  the  world  cautiously.  Many 
things  that  appear  easy  are  full  of  difficulties. 


To  A  lot  of  people  who  are  in  a  mortal  scurry  and  ex- 
citement what  is  so  maddening  as  the  calm  and  unruffled 
serenity  of  a  dignified  philosopher  who  gazes  unper- 
turbed upon  their  pangs?  So  did  we  meditate  when 
facing  the  deliberate  and  mild  tranquillity  of  the 
priestly  person  presiding  over  the  bulletin  board  an- 
nouncing the  arrival  of  trains  at  the  Pennsylvania 
Station.  It  was  in  that  desperate  and  curious  limbo 
known  as  the  "exit  concourse,"  where  baffled  creatures 
wait  to  meet  others  arriving  on  trains  and  maledict  the 
architect  who  so  planned  matters  that  the  passengers 
arrive  on  two  sides  at  once,  so  that  one  stands  griev- 
ously in  the  middle  slewing  his  eyes  to  one  side  and 
another  in  a  kind  of  vertigo,  attempting  to  con  both 
exits.  We  cannot  go  into  this  matter  in  full  (when,  in- 
deed, will  we  find  enough  white  paper  and  enough  en- 
ergy to  discuss  anything  in  full,  in  the  way,  perhaps, 
Henry  James  would  have  blanketed  it?),  but  we  will 
explain  that  we  were  waiting  to  meet  someone,  some- 
one we  had  never  seen,  someone  of  the  opposite  sex 
and  colour,  in  short,  that  rare  and  desirable  creature  a 
cook,  imported  from  another  city,  and  she  had  missed 
her  train,  and  all  we  knew  was  her  first  name  and  that 
she  would  wear  a  "brown  turban."  After  prowling 
distraitly  round  the  station  (and  a  large  station  it  is) 
and  asking  every  likely  person  if  her  name  was  Amanda, 


A  City  Note-book 

and  being  frowned  upon  and  suspected  as  a  black  slaver, 
and  thinking  we  felt  on  our  neck  the  heated  breath  and 
handcuffs  of  the  Travellers'  Aid  Society,  we  decided 
that  Amanda  must  have  missed  her  train  and  concluded 
to  wait  for  the  next.  Then  it  was,  to  return  to  our 
thesis,  that  we  had  occasion  to  observe  and  feel  in  our 
own  person  the  wretched  pangs  of  one  in  despair  facing 
the  gentle — shall  we  say  hesychastic? — peace  and  be- 
nevolent quietness  of  the  man  at  the  bulletin  board. 
Bombarded  with  questions  by  the  impatient  and 
anxious  crowd,  with  what  pacific  good  nature  he 
answered  our  doubts  and  querulities.  And  yet  how 
irritating  was  his  calmness,  his  deliberation,  the  very 
placidity  of  his  mien  as  he  surveyed  his  clacking  tel- 
autograph and  leisurely  took  out  his  schoolroom  eraser, 
rubbed  off  an  inscription,  then  polished  the  board  with 
a  cloth,  then  looked  for  a  piece  of  chalk  and  wrote  in  a 
fine  curly  hand  some  notation  about  a  train  from  Cin- 
cinnati in  which  we  were  not  at  all  interested.  Ah,  here 
we  are  at  last !  Train  from  Philadelphia !  Arriving  on 
track  Number — ;  no,  wrong  again!  He  only  changes 
5  minutes  late  to  10  minutes  late.  The  crowd  mutters 
and  fumes.  The  telautograph  begins  to  stutter  and  we 
gaze  at  it  feverishly.  It  stops  again  and  our  dominie 
looks  at  it  calmly.  He  taps  it  gently  with  his  finger. 
We  wonder,  is  it  out  of  order?  Perhaps  that  train  is 
already  coming  in  and  he  doesn't  know  it,  and  Amanda 
may  be  wandering  lost  somewhere  in  the  vast  vistas  of 
the  station  looking  for  us.  Shall  we  dash  up  to  the 
waiting  room  and  have  another  look?  But  Amanda 
does  not  know  the  station,  and  there  are  so  many  places 

[  227] 


Plum  Pudding 

where  benches  are  put,  and  she  might  think  one  of  those 
was  the  waiting  room  that  had  been  mentioned.  And 
then  there  is  this  Daylight  Saving  time  mix-up.  In  a 
sudden  panic  we  cannot  figure  out  whether  Philadelphia 
time  is  an  hour  ahead  of  New  York  time  or  an  hour 
behind.  We  told  Amanda  to  take  the  one  o'clock 
from  Philadelphia.  Well,  should  she  arrive  here  at  two 
o'clock  or  at  four?  It  being  now  5 :10  by  our  time,  what 
are  we  to  do?  The  telautograph  clicks.  The  priestly 
person  slowly  and  gravely  writes  downf  that  the  Phila- 
delphia train  is  arriving  on  Track  6.  There  is  a  mad 
rush :  everyone  dashes  to  the  gate.  And  here,  coming 
up  the  stairs,  is  a  coloured  lady  whose  anxiously  spec- 
ulating eye  must  be  the  one  we  seek.  In  the  mutuality 
of  our  worry  we  recognize  each  other  at  once.  We 
seize  her  in  triumph;  in  fact,  we  could  have  embraced 
her.  All  our  anguish  is  past.  Amanda  is  ours! 


THOUGHTS  IN  THE  SUBWAY 


WE  HEAR  people  complain  about  the  subway :  its 
brutal   competitive   struggle,  its   roaring   fury 
and  madness.     We  think  they  have  not  sufficiently 
considered  it. 

Any  experience  shared  daily  and  for  a  long  time  by 
a  great  many  people  comes  to  have  a  communal  and 
social  importance;  it  is  desirable  to  fill  it  with  mean- 
ing and  see  whether  there  may  not  be  some  beauty  in 
it.  The  task  of  civilization  is  not  to  be  always  looking 
wistfully  back  at  a  Good  Time  long  ago,  or  always 
panting  for  a  doubtful  millennium  to  come;  but  to  see 
the  significance  and  secret  of  that  which  is  around  us. 
And  so  we  say,  in  full  seriousness,  that  for  one  observer 
at  any  rate  the  subway  is  a  great  school  of  human 
study.  We  will  not  say  that  it  is  an  easy  school: 
it  is  no  kindergarten;  the  curriculum  is  strenuous  and 
wearying,  and  not  always  conducive  to  blithe  cheer. 

[229] 


Plum  Pudding 

But  what  a  tide  of  humanity,  poured  to  and  fro 
in  great  tides  over  which  the  units  have  little  control. 
What  a  sharp  and  troubled  awareness  of  our  fellow- 
beings,  drawn  from  study  of  those  thousands  of  faces — 
the  fresh  living  beauty  of  the  girls,  the  faces  of  men 
empty  of  all  but  suffering  and  disillusion,  a  shabby 
errand  boy  asleep,  goggling  with  weariness  and  adenoids 
— so  they  go  crashing  through  the  dark  in  a  patient 
fellowship  of  hope  and  mysterious  endurance.  How 
can  one  pass  through  this  quotidian  immersion  in  hu- 
manity without  being,  in  some  small  degree,  enriched  by 
that  admiring  pity  which  is  the  only  emotion  that  can 
permanently  endure  under  the  eye  of  a  questioning  star? 

Why,  one  wonders,  should  we  cry  out  at  the  pangs 
and  scuffles  of  the  subway?  Do  we  expect  great  things 
to  come  to  pass  without  corresponding  suffering?  Some 
day  a  great  poet  will  be  born  in  the  subway — spiritually 
speaking;  one  great  enough  to  show  us  the  terrific  and 
savage  beauty  of  this  multitudinous  miracle.  As  one 
watches  each  of  those  passengers,  riding  with  some 
inscrutable  purpose  of  his  own  (or  an  even  more  in- 
scrutable lack  of  purpose)  toward  duty  or  liberation, 
he  may  be  touched  with  anger  and  contempt  toward 
individuals;  but  he  must  admit  the  majesty  of  the 
spectacle  in  the  mass.  One  who  loves  his  country  for 
a  certain  candour  and  quick  vigour  of  spirit  will  view 
the  scene  again  and  again  in  the  hope  of  spying  out 
some  secrets  of  the  national  mind  and  destiny.  Daily 
he  bathes  in  America.  He  has  that  curious  sense  of 
mystical  meaning  in  common  things  that  a  traveller 
feels  coming  home  from  abroad,  when  he  finds  even  the 
[2301 


Thoughts  in  the  Subway 

most  casual  glimpses  strangely  pregnant  with  national 
identity.  In  the  advertisements,  despite  all  their  ab- 
surdities; in  voices  humorous  or  sullen;  even  in  the 
books  that  the  girls  are  reading  (for  most  girls  read 
books  in  the  subway)  he  will  try  to  divine  some  au- 
thentic law  of  life. 

He  is  but  a  poor  and  mean-spirited  lover — whether 
of  his  city,  his  country,  or  anything  else — who  loves 
her  only  because  he  has  known  no  other.  We  are  shy 
of  vociferating  patriotism  because  it  is  callow  and 
empty,  sprung  generally  from  mere  ignorance.  The 
true  enthusiast,  we  would  like  to  think,  is  he  who  can 
travel  daily  some  dozen  or  score  of  miles  in  the  sub- 
way, plunged  in  the  warm  wedlock  of  the  rush  hours; 
and  can  still  gather  some  queer  loyalty  to  that  rough, 
drastic  experience.  Other  than  a  sense  of  pity  and 
affection  toward  those  strangely  sculptured  faces,  all 
busy  upon  the  fatal  tasks  of  men,  it  is  hard  to  be 
precise  as  to  just  what  he  has  learned.  But  as  the 
crowd  pours  from  the  cars,  and  shrugs  off  the  burden 
of  the  journey,  you  may  see  them  looking  upward  to 
console  themselves  with  perpendicular  loveliness  leap- 
ing into  the  clear  sky.  Ah,  they  are  well  trained.  All 
are  oppressed  and  shackled  by  things  greater  than 
themselves;  yet  within  their  own  orbits  of  free  move- 
ment they  are  masters  of  the  event.  They  are  patient 
and  friendly,  and  endlessly  brave. 

II 

The  train  roared  through  the  subway,  that  warm 
typhoon  whipping  light  summer  dresses  in  a  multitu- 

[231] 


Plum  Pudding 

dinous  flutter.  All  down  the  bright  crowded  aisle  of 
patient  humanity  I  could  see  their  blowing  colours. 

My  eyes  were  touched  with  Truth:  I  saw  them  as 
they  are,  beautiful  and  brave. 

Is  Time  never  sated  with  loveliness?  How  many 
million  such  he  has  devoured,  and  must  he  take  these, 
too?  They  are  so  young,  so  slender,  so  untutored,  such 
unconscious  vessels  of  amazing  life;  so  courageous  in 
their  simple  finery,  so  unaware  of  the  Enemy  that  waits 
for  us  all.  With  what  strange  cruelties  will  he  trouble 
them,  their  very  gayety  a  temptation  to  his  hand?  See 
them  on  Broadway  at  the  lunch  hour,  pouring  in  their 
vivacious  thousands  onto  the  pavement.  Is  there  no 
one  who  wonders  about  these  merry  little  hostages? 
Can  you  look  on  them  without  marvelling  at  their  gal- 
lant mien? 

They  are  aware  of  their  charms,  but  unconscious  of 
their  loveliness.  Surely  they  are  a  new  generation  of 
their  sex,  cool,  assured,  even  capable.  They  are  happy* 
because  they  do  not  think  too  much;  they  are  lovely, 
because  they  are  so  perishable,  because  (despite  their 
naive  assumption  of  certainty)  one  knows  them  so  de- 
lightfully only  an  innocent  ornament  of  this  business 
world  of  which  they  are  so  ignorant.  They  are  the 
cheerful  children  of  Down  Town,  and  Down  Town  looks 
upon  them  with  the  affectionate  compassion  children 
merit.  Their  joys,  their  tragedies,  are  the  emotions  of 
children — all  the  more  terrible  for  that  reason. 

And  so  you  see  them,  day  after  day,  blithely  and 
gallantly  faring  onward  in  this  Children's  Crusade.  Can 
you  see  that  caravan  of  life  without  a  pang?  For  many 

[232] 


Thoughts  in  the  Subway 

it  is  tragic  to  be  young  and  beautiful  and  a  woman. 
Luckily,  they  do  not  know  it,  and  they  never  will.  But 
in  courage,  and  curiosity,  and  loveliness,  how  they  put 
us  all  to  shame.  I  see  them,  flashing  by  in  a  subway 
train,  golden  sphinxes,  whose  riddles  (as  Mr.  Cabell  said 
of  Woman)  are  not  worth  solving.  Yet  they  are  all  the 
more  appealing  for  that  fact.  For  surely  to  be  a 
riddle  which  is  not  worth  solving,  and  still  is  cherished 
as  a  riddle,  is  the  greatest  mystery  of  all.  What 
strange  journeys  lie  before  them,  and  how  triumphantly 
they  walk  the  precipices  as  though  they  were  mere 
meadow  paths. 

My  eyes  were  touched  with  Truth,  and  I  saw  them  as 
they  are,  beautiful  and  brave.  And  sometimes  I  think 
that  even  Time  must  be  sated  with  loveliness;  that  he 
will  not  crumble  them  or  mar  their  gallant  childishness; 
that  he  will  leave  them,  their  bright  dresses  fluttering,  as 
I  have  seem  them  in  the  subway  many  a  summer  day. 


[233] 


DEMPSEY  vs.  CARPENTIER 

THE  race  is  not  to  the  swift,  nor  the  battle  to  the 
strong;  but  as  Frank  Adams  once  remarked,  the 
betting  is  best  that  way.  The  event  at  Boyle's  Thirty 
Acres  in  Jersey  City  was  the  conclusive  triumph  of  Real- 
ity over  Romance,  of  Prose  over  Poetry.  To  almost  all 
the  newspaper-reading  world — except  the  canny  fellows 
who  study  these  matters  with  care  and  knowledge — 
Carpentier  had  taken  on  something  of  the  lustre  and 
divinity  of  myth.  He  was  the  white  Greek  god,  he 
was  Mercury  and  Apollo.  The  dope  was  against  him; 
but  there  were  many  who  felt,  obscurely,  that  in  some 
pregnant  way  a  miracle  would  happen.  His  limbs 
were  ivory,  his  eyes  were  fire;  surely  the  gods  would 
intervene!  Perhaps  they  would  have  but  for  the  defi- 

[234] 


Dempsey  vs.  Carpentier 

nite  pronouncement  of  the  mystagogue  G.  B.  Shaw. 
Even  the  gods  could  not  resist  the  chance  of  catching 
Shaw  off  his  base. 

We  are  not  a  turncoat;  we  had  hoped  that  Car- 
pentier would  win.  It  would  have  been  pleasant  if 
he  had,  quite  like  a  fairy  tale.  But  we  must  tell 
things  as  we  see  them.  Dempsey,  in  a  very  difficult 
situation,  bore  himself  as  a  champion,  and  (more  than 
that)  as  a  man  of  spirit  puzzled  and  angered  by  the 
feeling  that  has  been  rumoured  against  him.  Carpen- 
tier entered  the  ring  smiling,  perfectly  at  ease ;  but  there 
was  that  same  sunken,  wistful,  faintly  weary  look 
about  his  eyes  that  struck  us  when  we  first  saw  him, 
at  Manhasset,  three  weeks  ago.  It  was  the  look  of  a 
man  who  has  had  more  put  upon  him  than  he  can 
rightly  bear.  But  with  what  a  grace  and  aplomb  he 
stood  upon  that  scaffold !  Dempsey,  on  the  other  hand, 
was  sullen  and  sombre;  when  they  spoke  together  he 
seemed  embarrassed  and  kept  his  face  averted.  As  the 
hands  were  bandaged  and  gloves  put  on,  he  sat  with 
lowered  head,  his  dark  poll  brooding  over  his  fists, 
not  unlike  Rodin's  Thinker.  Carpentier,  at  the  oppo- 
site corner,  was  apparently  at  ease;  sat  smilingly  in  his 
gray  and  black  gown,  watching  the  airplanes. 

You  have  read  the  accounts  of  the  fight  to  small 
purpose  if  you  do  not  realize  that  Carpentier  was  ut- 
terly outclassed — not  in  skill  or  cunning,  but  in  those 
qualities  where  the  will  has  no  part,  in  power  and  reach. 
From  the  first  clinch,  when  Dempsey  began  that  series 
of  terrible  body  jabs  that  broke  down  the  Frenchman's 
energy  and  speed,  the  goose  was  cooked.  There  was 
[2351 


Plum  Pudding 

nothing  poetic  or  glamorous  about  those  jabs;  they 
were  not  spectacular,  not  particularly  swift;  but  they 
were  terribly  definite.  Half  a  dozen  of  them  altered 
the  scene  strangely.  The  smiling  face  became  haggard 
and  troubled. 

Carpentier,  too,  must  have  been  leaving  something 
to  the  gods,'  for  his  tactics  were  wildly  reckless.  He 
was  the  aggressor  at  the  start,  leading  fiercely  for 
Dempsey 's  jaw,  and  landing,  too,  but  not  heavily 
enough  to  do  damage.  Again  and  again  in  that  first 
round  he  fell  into  the  fatal  embrace  in  which  Dempsey 
punished  him  busily,  with  those  straight  body  strokes 
that  slid  in  methodically,  like  pistons.  Georges  seemed 
to  have  no  defence  that  could  slacken  those  blows.  After 
every  clinch  his  strength  plainly  ebbed  and  withered. 
Away,  he  dodged  nimbly,  airily,  easily  more  dramatic 
in  arts  of  manoeuvre.  But  Dempsey,  tall,  sullen,  com- 
posed, followed  him  steadily.  He  seemed  slow  beside 
that  flying  white  figure,  but  that  wheeling  amble  was 
deadly  sure.  He  was  always  on  the  inner  arc,  Car- 
pentier on  the  outer;  the  long,  swarthy  arms  were 
impenetrable  in  front  of  his  vitals;  again  and  again  he 
followed  up,  seeking  to  corner  his  man;  Carpentier 
would  fling  a  shining  arm  at  the  dark  jaw;  a  clinch 
would  follow  in  which  the  two  leaned  together  in  that 
curious  posture  of  apparent  affection;  and  they  hung 
upon  each  other's  necks — Carpentier,  from  a  distance, 
looking  almost  like  a  white  girl  languishing  in  the  arms 
of  some  dark,  solicitous  lover.  But  Mr.  Dempsey 
was  the  Fatal  Bridegroom,  for  at  each  union  he  would 
rivet  in  several  more  of  those  steam  punches. 


Dempsey  vs.  Carpentier 

There  was  something  almost  incredible  in  the  scene — 
so  we  had  been  drilled  in  that  Million-Dollar  Myth,  the 
unscathability  of  Carpentier.  Was  this  Gorgeous 
Georges,  this  blood-smeared,  wilting,  hunted  figure, 
flitting  desperately  from  the  grim,  dark-jowled  avenger? 
And  then,  in  the  latter  part  of  the  second  round, 
Georges  showed  one  flash  of  his  true  genius.  Suddenly 
he  sprang,  leaping  (so  it  seemed)  clear  from  the  canvas, 
and  landed  solidly  (though  not  killingly)  on  Dempsey 's 
jaw.  There  was  a  flicker  of  lightning  blows,  and  for 
an  instant  Dempsey  was  retreating,  defensive,  even  a 
little  jarred.  That  was  the  high  moment  of  the  fight, 
and  the  crowd  then  showed  its  heart.  Ninety  thousand 
people  had  come  there  to  see  bloodshed;  through  several 
humid  hours  they  had  sat  in  a  rising  temperature,  both 
inward  and  outward,  with  cumulating  intensity  like  that 
of  a  kettle  approaching  the  boil.  Dempsey  had  had  a 
bigger  hand  on  entering  the  ring;  but  so  far  it  had 
been  too  one-sided  for  much  roaring.  But  now,  for  an 
instant,  there  was  actual  fighting.  There  were  some 
who  thought  that  if  Georges  could  have  followed  up  this 
advantage  he  still  had  a  chance.  We  do  not  think  so. 
Dempsey  was  not  greatly  shaken.  He  was  too  power- 
ful and  too  hard  to  reach.  They  clinched  and  stalled 
for  a  moment,  and  the  gong  came  shortly.  But  Car- 
pentier had  shown  his  tiger  streak.  Scotty  Monteith, 
manager  (so  we  were  told)  of  Johnny  Dundee,  sat  just 
in  front  of  us  in  a  pink  skirt,  and  had  been  gathering  up 
substantial  wagers  from  the  ill-starred  French  journal- 
ists near  by.  Scotty  was  not  in  any  doubt  as  to  the  out- 
come, but  even  he  was  moved  by  Carpentier 's  gallant 
[237] 


Plum  Pudding 

sally.     "No  one  knew  he  was  a  fighter  like  that,"  he 
said. 

The  rest  is  but  a  few  words.  Carpentier's  face  had 
a  wild,  driven  look.  His  hits  seemed  mere  taps  beside 
Dempsey's.  In  the  fourth  round  he  went  down  once, 
for  eight  or  nine  counts,  and  climbed  up  painfully. 
The  second  time  he  sprawled  flat;  Dempsey,  still  with 
that  pensive  lowered  head,  walked  grimly  in  a  semi- 
circle, waiting  to  see  if  that  was  the  end.  It  was. 
Greek  gods  are  no  match  for  Tarzans  in  this  game. 

It  was  all  over  in  a  breathless  flash.  It  was  not  one 
lucky  blow  that  did  it,  but  a  sequence  of  business- 
like crushing  strokes.  We  shall  not  soon  forget  that 
picture  before  the  gong  rang:  Carpentier,  still  the 
White  Knight  of  legend  and  glory,  with  his  charming 
upward  smile  and  easy  unconcern;  and  Dempsey's 
dark  cropped  head,  bent  and  glowering  over  his  chest. 
There  was  in  Dempsey's  inscrutable,  darkling  mien  a 
cold,  simmering  anger,  as  of  a  man  unfairly  hounded, 
he  hardly  knew  why.  And  probably,  we  think,  un- 
justly. You  will  say  that  we  import  a  symbolism  into 
a  field  where  it  scarcely  thrives.  But  Carpentier's  en- 
gaging merriment  in  the  eye  of  oncoming  downfall 
seemed  to  us  almost  a  parable  of  those  who  have  smiled 
too  confidingly  upon  the  dark  faces  of  the  gods. 


[238] 


A  LETTER  TO  A  SEA  CAPTAIN 
(To  D.W.B.) 

DEAR  CAPTAIN: 

You  are  the  most  modest  of  men,  but  even  at  the 
risk  of  arousing  your  displeasure  we  have  it  on  our 
mind  to  say  something  about  you.  We  shall  try  not  to 
be  offensively  personal,  for  indeed  we  are  thinking  not 
merely  of  yourself  but  also  of  the  many  others  of  your 
seafaring  art  who  have  always  been  such  steadfast  ser- 
vants of  the  public,  the  greatness  of  whose  service  has 
not  always  been  well  enough  understood.  But  perhaps 
it  is  only  fair  that  the  sea  captain,  so  unquestionable 
an  autocrat  in  his  own  world,  should  be  called  upon  to 
submit  to  that  purging  and  erratic  discipline  which  is 
so  notable  a  feature  of  our  American  life — publicity! 

[239] 


Plum  Pudding 

It  is  not  enough  understood,  we  repeat,  how  valuable 
and  charming  the  sea  captain  is  as  an  agent  and  private 
ambassador  of  international  friendship.  Perhaps  we  do 
not  know  you  until  we  have  seen  you  at  sea  (may  the 
opportunity  serve  anon!).  We  have  only  known  you 
with  your  majesty  laid  aside,  your  severity  relaxed.  But 
who  else  so  completely  and  humorously  understands 
both  sides  of  the  water,  and  in  his  regular  movements 
from  side  to  side  acts  so  shrewd  a  commentator  on 
Anglo-American  affairs?  Who  takes  more  keen  delight 
in  our  American  ways,  in  the  beauty  of  this  New  York 
of  which  we  are  so  proud,  who  has  done  so  much  to 
endear  each  nation  to  the  other?  Yours,  true  to  your 
blood  (for  you  are  Scot  Scotorum),  is  the  humorist's 
way:  how  many  passengers  you  have  warmed  and 
tickled  with  your  genial  chaff,  hiding  constant  kindness 
under  a  jocose  word,  perhaps  teasing  us  Americans  on 
our  curious  conduct  of  knives  and  forks,  or  (for  a 
change)  taking  the  cisatlantic  side  of  the  jape,  es- 
teeming no  less  highly  a  sound  poke  at  British  foibles. 

All  this  is  your  personal  gift:  it  is  no  necessary  part 
of  the  master's  equipment  to  be  so  gracefully  convers- 
able. Of  the  graver  side  of  the  sea  captain's  life,  though 
you  say  little,  we  see  it  unconsciously  written  in  your 
bearing.  Some  of  us,  who  know  just  a  little  about  it, 
can  guess  something  of  its  burdens,  its  vigils,  and  its 
courages.  There  is  something  significant  in  the  ob- 
scure instinct  that  some  of  your  friends  have  to  seize 
what  opportunity  they  can  of  seeing  you  in  your  own 
quarters  when  you  are  in  port.  For  though  a  ship  in 
dock  is  a  ship  fettered  and  broken  of  much  of  her  life 
[240] 


A  Letter  to  a  Sea  Captain 

and  meaning,  yet  in  the  captain's  cabin  the  landsman 
feels  something  of  that  fine,  faithful,  and  rigorous  way 
of  life.  It  is  a  hard  life,  he  knows;  a  life  of  stringent 
seriousness,  of  heavy  responsibilities:  and  yet  it  is  a 
life  for  which  we  are  fool  enough  to  speak  the  fool's  word 
of  envy.  It  is  a  life  spared  the  million  frittering  interrup- 
tions and  cheerful  distractions  that  devil  the  journalist; 
it  is  a  life  cut  down  to  the  essentials  of  discipline,  sim- 
plicity, and  service;  a  life  where  you  must,  at  necessity, 
be  not  merely  navigator  but  magistrate,  employer,  and 
priest.  Birth,  death,  and  all  the  troubles  that  lie  be- 
tween, fall  under  your  sway,  and  must  find  you  un- 
perturbed. But,  when  you  go  out  of  that  snug  cabin 
for  your  turn  of  duty,  at  any  rate  you  have  the  dark 
happiness  of  knowing  that  you  go  to  a  struggle  worthy 
your  powers,  the  struggle  with  that  old,  immortal,  un- 
conquerable, and  yet  daily  conquered  enemy,  the  Sea. 

And  so  you  go  and  come,  you  go  and  come,  and  we 
learn  to  count  on  your  regular  appearance  every  four 
weeks  as  we  would  on  any  stated  gesture  of  the  zodiac. 
You  come  eager  to  pick  up  the  threads  of  what  has 
been  happening  in  this  our  town,  what  books  people  are 
talking  about,  what  is  the  latest  jape,  and  what  (your 
tastes  being  so  catholic!)  "Percy  and  Ferdie"  are  up 
to.  And  you,  in  turn,  bring  news  of  what  they  are 
saying  in  Sauchiehall  Street  or  Fleet  Street,  and  what 
books  are  making  a  stir  on  the  other  side.  You  take 
copies  of  American  books  that  catch  your  fancy  and 
pass  them  on  to  British  reviewers,  always  at  your 
quixotic  task  of  trying  to  make  each  side  appreciate 
the  other's  humours.  For,  though  we  promised  not  to 
[241] 


Plum  Pudding 

give  you  away  too  personally,  you  are  not  only  the  sea 
captain  but  the  man  of  letters,  too,  eminent  in  that 
fielpl  in  your  own  right. 

There  must  be  some  valid  reason  why  so  many 
good  writers,  and  several  who  have  some  claim  on  the 
word  "  great,"  have  been  bred  of  the  sea.  Great  writing 
comes  from  great  stress  of  mind — which  even  a  journal- 
ist may  suffer — but  it  also  requires  strictness  of  se- 
clusion and  isolation.  Surely,  on  the  small  and  decently 
regimented  island  of  a  ship  a  man's  mind  must  turn 
inward.  Surrounded  by  all  that  barren  beauty  of  sky 
and  sea,  so  lovely,  and  yet  so  meaningless  to  the  mind, 
the  doomed  business  of  humanity  must  seem  all  the 
more  precious  and  deserving  of  tenderness.  Perhaps 
that  is  what  old  George  Herbert  meant  when  he  said, 
He  that  will  learn  to  pray,  let  him  go  to  sea. 


THE  END 


242] 


This  and  the  following  are  advertisements  of  Mr.  Morley' s  books. 

A  modern  humorist  with 
the  tang  of  an  Elizabethan 

CHRISTOPHER  MORLEY 


ONCE  upon  a  time  Christopher  Morley  was  coerced, 
against  the  objections  of  a  well-nigh  blushing 
modesty,  to  dictate  some  notes  which  we  may  go 
so  far  as  to  call  autobiographical.  In  part  they  were : 

"Born  at  Haverford,  Pa.,  in  1890;  father,  professor 
of  mathematics  and  a  poet;  mother  a  musician,  poet,  and 
fine  cook.  I  was  handicapped  by  intellectual  society 
and  good  nourishment.  I  am  and  always  have  been 
too  well  fed.  Great  literature  proceeds  from  an  empty 
stomach.  My  proudest  achievement  is  having  been 
asked  by  a  college  president  to  give  a  course  of  lectures  on 
Chaucer. 

"When  I  was  graduated  from  Haverford  in  1910,  a 
benevolent  posse  of  college  presidents  in  Maryland  sent 
me  to  New  College,  Oxford,  as  a  Rhodes  scholar.  At  Ox- 
ford I  learned  to  drink  shandygaff.  When  I  came  home 
from  England  in  1913  I  started  to  work  for  Doubleday, 
Page  &  Company  at  Garden  City.  I  learned  to  read 
Conrad,  and  started  my  favorite  hobby,  which  is  getting 
letters  from  William  McFee.  By  the  way,  my  favorite 
amusement  is  hanging  around  Leary's  second-hand  book 
store  in  Philadelphia.  My  dearest  dream  is  to  own  some 
kind  of  a  boat,  write  one  good  novel  and  about  thirty 
plays  which  would  each  run  a  year  on  Broadway.  I  have 
written  book  reviews,  editorials,  dramatic  notices,  worked 
as  a  reporter,  a  librarian,  in  a  bookstore,  and  have  given 
lectures."  Mr.  Morley  should  have  added  that  he  is  now 
conductor  of  "The  Bowling  Green"  on  the  editorial  page 
of  the  New  York  Evening  Post. 


PLUM  PUDDING 

By  CHRISTOPHER  MORLEY 

"And  merrily  embellished  by  Walter  Jack  Duncan'* 


S  Mr.  Morley  entitles  his  new  volume,  in  which  he  has 
•••  occupied  himself  with  books  in  particular,  but  also  with  divers 
other  ingredients  such  as  city  and  suburban  incidents,  women, 
dogs,  children,  tadpoles,  and  so  on. 

Plum  Pudding,  $1.75 


THE    HAUNTED 
BOOKSHOP 

WE  HAVE  just  found  an  advertisement  for  "The  Haunted 
Bookshop"  which  was  never  released,  though  it  was  writ- 
ten before  the  book  was  published.     Can  you  guess  the  writer 
of  it?    We're  not  at  liberty  to  tell,  for  he  would  never  forgive 
our  mentioning  his  name. 

"THIS  SHOP  IS  HAUNTED!" 

Such  was  the  sign  that  "met  the  eyes  of  those  who 
entered  Parnassus  at  Home,  a  very  unusual  bookshop 
on  Gissing  Street,  Brooklyn.  Roger  Mifflin,  the 
eccentric  booklover  who  owned  the  shop,  only  meant 
that  his  shop  was  haunted  by  the  great  spirits  of  liter- 
ature, but  there  were  more  substantial  ghosts  about, 
as  the  story  tells.  Read  the  curious  adventures  that 
befell  after  Titania  Chapman  came  to  learn  the  book 
business  in  the  mellow  atmosphere  of  the  second-hand 
bookshop  of  this  novel.  There  was  mystery  connected 
with  the  elusive  copy  of  Carlyle's  Oliver  Cromwell, 
which  kept  on  disappearing  from  Roger's  shelves. 
Some  readers  may  remember  that  Roger  Mifflin  was 
the  hero  of  Mr.  Morley's  first  novel,  Parnassus  on 
Wheels,  though  this  is  in  no  sense  a  sequel,  but  an  inde- 
pendent story. 

The  Haunted  Bookshop,  $1.75 


SHANDYGAFF 

This  is  the  book  at  the  beginning  of  which  its  author  has  placed  this 
bit  of  explanation: 

SHANDYGAFF:  a  very  refreshing  drink,  being  a  mixture  of 
bitter  ale  or  beer  and  ginger-beer,  commonly  drunk  by  the 
lower  classes  of  England,  and  by  strolling  tinkers,  low  church 
parsons,  newspaper  men,  journalists,  and  prizefighters.  .  .  . 

JOHN  MISTLETOE: 
Dictionary  of  Deplorable  Facts 

Published  in  the  war  period,  "Shandygaff"  brought  this  humorous 
letter  from  J.  Edgar  Park,  of  Massachusetts,  Presbyterian  pastor  and 
author  of  "The  Disadvantages  of  Being  Good": 

"This  book  of  Morley's  is  absolutely  useless — mere  rot.  It  has  al- 
ready cost  me  not  only  its  price  but  also  two  candles  for  an  all-night 
seance  and  an  entire  degeneration  of  my  most  sad  and  sober  resolutions. 
Money  I  needed  for  shoes,  solemnity  I  needed  for  my  reputation — all 
have  gone  to  the  winds  in  this  nightmare  of  love,  laughter,  boyishness, 
and  tobacco-smoke!"  Shandygaff,  $1.75 

PIPEFULS 

"These  sketches  gave  me  pain  to  write;  they  will  give  the  judicious 
patron  pain  to  read;  therefore  we  are  quits.  I  think,  as  I  look  over 
their  slattern  paragraphs,  of  that  most  tragic  hour — it  falls  about  4  p.  M. 
in  the  office  of  an  evening  newspaper — when  the  unhappy  compiler  tries 
to  round  up  the  broodings  of  the  day  and  still  get  home  in  time  for  supper." 

The  Author 

"Envelops  in  clouds  of  fragrant  English  many  quaint  ideas  about  life, 
living,  and  literature  ...  A  belated  Elizabethan  who  has  strayed 
into  the  twentieth  century!  These  piping  little  essays  are  mellow  and 
leisurely!"— The  Sun,  New  York  Pipefuls,  $1.75 

KATHLEEN-a  story 

^  "Kathleen"  is  about  an  Oxford  undergraduate  prank.  Members  of  a 
literary  club,  The  Scorpions,  agree  to  write  a  serial  story  on  shares.  They 
invent  a  tale  around  certain  names  in  an  accidentally  found  letter  signed 
"Kathleen."  Their  romantic  fervor  soon  takes  them  off  together  in  search 
of  the  real  author  of  the  letter.  One  suspects  that  Mr.  Morley,  as  a 
Rhodes  scholar  at  Oxford,  might  have  been  up  to  just  such  pranks.  Any- 
way, consider  this  dedication:  "TO  THE  REAL  KATHLEEN— With 
Apologies"  His  comedy  is  as  interesting  as  his  essays,  its  humor  pointed 
by  the  rapid  flow  of  action. 

Kathleen,  $1.25 


TALES  FROM  A  ROLLTOP  DESK 

The  lucky  eleven  stories  in  this  volume  are  introduced  by  a  long  letter 
of  dedication  which  starts  off: 

DEAR  EFFENDI: 

I  take  the  liberty  of  dedicating  these  little  stories  to  you, 
with  affection  and  respect.  They  have  all  grown,  in  one  mcod 
or  another,  out  of  the  various  life  of  Grub  Street,  suggested  by 
adventures  with  publishers,  booksellers,  magazine  editors, 
newspaper  men,  theatrical  producers,  commuters,  and  poets 
major  and  minor.  If  they  have  any  appeal  at  all  it  must  be  as 
an  honest  (though  perhaps  too  jocular)  picture  of  the  excite- 
ments that  gratify  the  career  of  young  men  who  embark  upon 
the  ocean  of  ink,  and  (let  us  not  forget)  those  much-enduring 
Titanias  who  consent  to  share  their  vicissitudes.  .  .  . 

You  must  be  sure  to  read  the  rest  of  this  delightful  letter  before  you 
start  the  first  story  in  the  book. 

Tales  From  a  Rolltop  Desk,  $1.75 

PARNASSUS  ON  WHEELS 

Was  this  book  one  of  the  innumerable  manuscripts  Morley  nurtured 
in  his  personal  plans  for  publishing,  when  he  visited  his  first  em- 
ployer asking  for  a  job?  This  incident  is  described  reminiscently  by  that 
employer  as  follows  (excerpt):  "Morley  immediately  dove  into  a  deep 
pocket  and  produced  a  large  number  of  papers  on  which  were  worked 
out  books  and  plans  for  series  of  books  in  vast  array.  To  gain  time,  I 
suggested  that  to  work  out  these  schemes  would  almost  break  the  Chemi- 
cal Bank.  But  I  failed  to  interest  him.  He  had  it  in  his  mind  that  he 
had  come  to  a  publisher  to  talk  books — not  finance — a  subject  which, 
so  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  see,  Morley  found  rather  boresome  then  and 
since!" 

After  "Parnassus  on  Wheels"  appeared,  Edwin  F.  Edgett  (Boston 
Evening  Transcript)  wrote:  "To  read  'Parnassus  on  Wheels'  is  to  be 
glad  there  are  books  in  the  world.  It  gives  us  hope  for  the  younger 
generation  of  writers!" 

Parnassus  on  Wheels,  $1.50 


Morley's  popularity  explains  our  addition  of  three  more 
titles  to  the  limp  leather  edition  of  his  works.  Now  available 
in  pocket  size,  red  leather  binding:  The  Haunted  Bookshop, 
Parnassus  on  Wheels,  Shandygaff,  Pipefuls,  Plum  Pudding, 
$2.50  each;  the  set.  $12.50. 

The  Publishers 


THE  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  SANTA  CRUZ 


This  book  is  due  on  the  last  DATE  stamped  below. 


100,n-8,'65(F6282s8)2373 


AT  MRI F 


00213  1172 


